IN THE PKESS. 

By the Same Author. 

SUBSTANCE AND SHOW, 

AND OTHER LECTURES. 
Complete in one vol. 16mo. 

Uniform with "Christianity and Humanity." 

$ 2.00. 

%* For sale by all Booksellers. Sen/, pos'paid, on receipt of 
price, by the Publishers, 

JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston. 



CHRISTIANITY and HUMANITY: 



% $mt* oi Sztxaaxm 

BY 

THOMAS STARR KING. 



EDITED, WITH A MEMOIR, 

By EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 




BOSTON : 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1877. 




Copyright, 1877. 
By JAMES R OSGOOD & CO. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

MEMOIR vii 

I . The Experimental Evidence of Chris- 
tianity I 

II. Cries from the Depths ... 17 

III. The Supremacy of Jesus .... 33 

IV. Christian Thought of the Future Life 50 
V. True Spiritual Communications . . 71 

VI. Life more Abundantly ... 90 
VII. Lessons of the Drought . . . .105 

VIII. The Christian and the Heathen Dollar 122 

IX. The Divine Estimate of Death . . 136 

X. Distribution of Sorrows ... 155 

XI. Deliverance from the Fear of Death 171 

XII. The Two Harvests .... 188 

XIII. The Organ and its Symbolism . . 204 

XIV. The Supreme-Court Decision, and our 

Duties 324 



vi Contents. 

XV. Living for Ideas and Principles . 242 

XVI. The Heart, and the Issues of Life 254 

XVII. Salt that has lost its Savor; or, Re- 
ligion Corrupted .... 267 

XVIII. Lessons from the Sierra Nevada . 285 

XIX. Living Water from Lake Tahoe . 304 

XX. The Comet of July, 1861 . . . 325 

XXI. Religious Lessons from Metallurgy . 348 

XXII. Christian Worship .... 363 



MEMOIR. 



HE writer of the sermons in this volume 



preacher and lecturer ; but perhaps the affection 
and admiration which were attracted to him as a 
rare example of Christian manhood do more jus- 
tice to his character than even these discourses 
can do to the intellect which was the offshoot and 
expression of it. Nobody more quickly converted 
chance acquaintances into warm friends. To 
know him was to love him. Persons of all grades 
of mind, culture, occupation, and disposition felt 
the effortless strength and charm of his rich and 
genial nature, from the common beggar who 
intruded into his study with his pathetic appeal 
for help, always kindly met, all the way up to 
such an intellectual giant as Agassiz, who came 
to converse with him on the question of the Di- 
vine Personality, a subject dear to the hearts of 
both preacher and naturalist. He thus necessa- 
rily made a host of friends ; and one of these now 
attempts to give a brief summary of the incidents 
of his life and the qualities of his character. 

Thomas Starr King was born in the city of 
New York, on December 17, 1824. His father 




distinguished as an eloquent 



viii 



Memoir of 



was of English, his mother of German, descent. 
Both were characterized by largeness and gen- 
erosity of soul. The Rev. Thomas Farrington 
King, the father, was a Universalist minister of 
the Restorationist type, and was noted among the 
clergymen of his denomination for the fervor with 
which he preached self-renunciation for the sake 
of Christ, and the cheerful way in which he sub- 
mitted to the hardships of poverty in his zeal to 
prove his doctrine by his conduct. Like his son, 
he was the ever-ready victim of what are called 
unworthy objects of charity, that is, of persons 
who need charity the most. For example, when 
he was settled in Portsmouth, N. H., he was 
once called down from his study by a rough- 
looking Irishman, who had established himself in 
the sitting-room, and who demanded help. "What 
do you want?" Mr. King mildly inquired. 
" Money enough, your riverence, to get to 
Boston." "Why do you call on me rather than 
on the Roman Catholic priest?" "Well, I 
thought I'd give you the preference." "Where 
did you come from last?" "Concord." "In 
what part of Concord ? " " Well, your riverence, 
I think they call it the State's Prison ; but mind, 
I was n't put in there for any dirty larceny, but 
for having, in an unguarded moment, just laid my 
hands on a countryman of mine in a way they call 
manslaughter." With the fluent eloquence char- 
acteristic of his race, he proceeded to urge his 
claim. The Universalist minister only knew that 



Thomas Starr King. 



ix 



the fellow was in want, was disposed to do better 
in the future, and was confident he could obtain 
work if he was supplied with the means of getting 
to Boston. The money was given, though it stinted 
the pastor's family of some minor necessities. The 
Irishman, who was sound to the core as to the 
dogmas of his church, overwhelmed the Universal- 
ist minister with thanks, wishing him all blessings 
in this world, and adding, with a roguish twinkle 
in his eyes, " And may ye be in heaven a fortnight 
before the Divil knows ye 're dead ! " The reci- 
pient of this equivocal blessing had sufficient sense 
of humor to understand how the man was grateful 
for the service done to him, but was still careful to 
preserve his own position as a devout believer in 
the church which looks on Universalists as out- 
casts from the heavenly kingdom. 

It is plain that such a clergyman, when he 
died, would leave little to his family. From 1835 
to 1839 he was the minister of a flourishing Uni- 
versalist society in Charlestown, Mass., and was 
much beloved by his congregation. He died at 
the age of forty-two, living long enough to witness 
the precocity of his son, and to feel sure of his 
future eminence. Indeed, the boy had early mani- 
fested singular aptitude for study, and equally sin- 
gular obedience to every call of duty. He was 
as conscientious as he was vivacious ; full of fun 
and frolic, yet endowed with a premature purity 
and thoughtfulness which kept him free from the 
coarseness, roughness, and disregard of the claims 



X 



Memoir of 



of others, which are apt to characterize lads of a 
mercurial temperament. 

His education was desultory, but, with his quick- 
ness of apprehension, he acquired Latin and 
French at an early age. More than this, he 
seemed at once to perceive that the acquisition 
of a language was valuable chiefly as it opened 
the door to an acquaintance with its literature. 

At the age of fifteen, when his father died, he 
became the head of the family, and subordinated 
his hunger for knowledge to the pressing practical 
needs of his new position. He became a clerk 
in a dry-goods store, then a teacher in a grammar- 
school, then a clerk in the Charlestown Navy Yard, 
devoting his gains to the support of those whom 
his father's death had left in straitened pecuniary 
circumstances. His leisure was pretty equally de- 
voted to study and social enjoyments. Theodore 
Parker made King's acquaintance when the latter 
was about nineteen ; and speaks of him, in hisdiary, 
as a "capital fellow, who reads French, Spanish, 
Latin, Italian, a little Greek, and begins German." 
He adds, " A good listener." The youth evi- 
dently had his ears open to the talk of such a 
scholar and social force ; but though he listened 
respectfully, without debating Mr. Parker's dog- 
matic judgments, he had his eyes open as well. 
At this period of his life he modestly heard what 
the eminent men who made his acquaintance had 
to say; he was reticent as to his own opinions on 
the subjects they conversed about ; he lured them 



Memoir of 



xi 



on to pour out their thoughts by the eager interest 
which sparkled in his eyes as he looked up into 
their faces \ and it was only in letters to friends 
of his own age that he ventured his criticisms on 
the statements they made and the principles they 
expounded. Earnestly desirous to learn from 
other minds, his mental hospitality never impaired 
his mental independence. This combination of 
eager receptiveness with critical judgment is the 
condition of that vigorous and rapid assimilation 
of knowledge which really increases intellectual 
power. 

The studies in which he most delighted were 
metaphysics and theology, especially their con- 
nection with each other in the history and phi- 
losophy of religion. At the period when he en- 
tered upon what may be called his intellectual 
life, the works of Cousin were exercising a great 
deal of influence on popular New England thought, 
and were read with special sympathy by those who 
sympathized with the humanitarian theology of 
Dr. Channing. Cousin inspired King, as a boy, 
with a passion for general principles; and the eclec- 
ticism of the eloquent Frenchman, as it proceeded 
on the ground of doing justice to every philosophi- 
cal thinker by placing his leading thought into right 
relations with the results of the thinking of the 
whole philosophic world, at once attracted and 
expanded his inborn tendency to intellectual tol- 
eration and comprehensiveness. Among the two 
hundred sermons I have more or less carefully 



xii 



Thomas Star}' King. 



examined in order to provide the materials of this 
volume, I have been constantly surprised by the 
fact that, strong as King was in his convictions of 
the truth of what may be called his own Univer- 
salist-Unitarian belief, he was ever eager and 
ready to recognize and interpret the faith of 
churches and denominations most opposed to his 
own. Whenever he was called upon to defend 
his own creed against an aggressive movement of 
the ministers of the Orthodox dogmas, he com- 
monly began with a statement of the value of the 
ideas which his opponents stood for exclusively, 
feeling that they responded to needs of classes of 
Christians which his own cherished doctrines did 
not meet ; and whenever, in the fervor of contro- 
versy, he was betrayed into any of the exclusive- 
ness he was combating, I am convinced that every 
intolerant word he uttered, in the heat of the mo- 
ment, left a bad taste in his mouth after it had 
heedlessly passed his lips. For this general dis- 
position to interpret rather than to denounce opin- 
ions which were at variance with his own, he was, 
probably, much indebted to his early reading of 
the works of Cousin. This disposition is shown 
in so many of his sermons that it must have be- 
come a second nature. Running through all his 
ministry at Charlestown and Boston, it is specially 
observable in his first sermon on assuming the 
pastorship of the Unitarian Church in San Fran- 
cisco. Indeed, it is repeated so often that it at 
last becomes almost wearisome ; though why such 



Memoir of 



xiii 



a principle, involving, as it does, the only hope we 
can have of a universal Christian Church, bound 
together by the spirit of Christ rather than by 
dogmas and ceremonies which subordinate his 
spirit to the forms in which it has been organized, 
should become wearisome, proves that the sin still 
predominates over the saintliness of even the 
chosen persons who are the most eminent embodi- 
ments of the Christian life in our numerous dis- 
tracted churches. King felt, to the very core of 
his heart, that the only true Church was an ideal 
one, which might in the future be organized by a 
union of all men and women who really loved 
God and man, and acted in accordance with their 
belief. Meanwhile he heartily honored every hu- 
man being, whatever might be his dogmatic belief, 
whose life and work were in harmony with the 
beneficent spirit of Christ. 

This premature comprehensiveness of mind 
was deepened and extended by the thoughtful 
reading of Charming. It is difficult for young 
men of the present day, disciplined by the study 
of Huxley, Tyndall, and Darwin, of Strauss, 
Bauer, and Renan, to understand the magic which 
Channing exercised, thirty-five or forty years ago, 
on sensitive youths, born and bred in " liberal " 
families, who came into contact with his devout 
spirit, and who were kindled by his doctrine of 
the dignity of human nature, his exaltation of 
moral over intellectual excellence, his confident 
statement of the never-pausing desire of the. Infinite 



xiv 



Thomas Starr King. 



to come into cleansing communion with his finite 
children, and his emphatic announcement of the 
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 
As a youth, King had no vices to prevent his 
cordial reception of the moral and spiritual enthu- 
siasm which animated the discourses of this great 
preacher. His mind quivered with a new delight 
as he felt the freshening breeze of Channing's re- 
ligious genius stir the deeps of his soul. After- 
wards he mastered the results of the great Ger- 
man and French critics of the Bible. To many 
of our present young students, exegesis practi- 
cally means exit Jesus ; but King, in all his eager 
quest of truth, and dutiful acknowledgment of the 
service which the great German theologians had 
rendered to the rational interpretation of the 
Scriptures, never lost his original hold on Christ 
Jesus as the express image of God, — as the Son 
who reveals to us the Father, — as the ideal em- 
bodiment of a perfected Humanity, pointing 

" To that far-off, divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Such a person had a natural call to the minis- 
try • and, though he had been trained in no di- 
vinity school, his self-taught, self-disciplined mind 
was filled with a larger store of well-arranged 
knowledge than ordinary theological students then 
brought from the teachings of either Professor 
Park or Professor Noyes. He had the advantage 
of being the personal friend of one of the most 
accomplished scholars that the Universalist de- 



Thomas Starr King. xv 



nomination has produced, the Rev. Dr. Hosea 
Ballou (2d), — a friendship which years only- 
deepened and made more intimate ; and, through 
his wonderfully accurate reports of the three 
courses of lectures on Natural Theology, which 
the Rev. Dr. James Walker delivered at the 
Lowell Institute, he became personally acquainted 
with that acutest of metaphysicians among con- 
temporary Unitarian divines. Both of these emi- 
nent men exercised a marked influence on his 
rapidly forming mind and character. In addition 
to these, he had all those professors of theology, 
philosophy, and literature who have left, in books, 
undying records of their thoughts and lives ; and, 
in imagination, he discoursed with Plato, Des- 
cartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Reid, and Hamil- 
ton, with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Hooker, Tay- 
lor, De Wette, and Martineau, with Virgil, Tasso, 
Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe, as though they 
were not only authors to be read, but august per- 
sons who deigned to count him among their circle 
of acquaintances. These dead or distant teachers 
were all alive and present to him ; and he studied 
under their guidance as though they were lectur- 
ing to him from the professor's desk. The result 
was, that, though his scholarship, at the age of 
twenty-two, was not as deep as it was broad, yet, 
owing to his singular swiftness of apprehension, 
it was larger than most educated preachers bring 
from the university and divinity school to the 
pulpit. 



xvi 



Memoir of 



His first public address was delivered at Med- 
ford, Mass., on the 4th of July, 1845. His first 
sermon was preached at Woburn, in the autumn 
of the same year. Boyish as he was in appear- 
ance, he at once became noted as a preacher of 
peculiar attractiveness ; and, after serving a short 
apprenticeship in filling the pulpit of a small Uni- 
versalist society in Boston, during the absence of 
its pastor, he accepted, on the 2d of August, 
1846, a call from the large and flourishing Uni- 
versalist Church in Charlestown to be its pastor. 
Thus, before he had arrived at the age of twenty- 
two, he succeeded to the same pulpit which his 
father had filled at the time of his death, at the 
age of forty-two. His immediate predecessor 
was the Rev. Edwin H. Chapin, who had, during 
his ministry, exhibited the germs of all those 
qualities which have since raised him to a high 
rank among the most renowned pulpit and plat- 
form orators of the United States. King's slen- 
der figure was in as marked contrast to Chapin's 
stalwart frame as the "sweet reasonableness " of 
his persuasive eloquence was to the rush and 
vehemence of Chapin's glowing arguments and 
appeals ; but he still satisfied the raised expecta- 
tions of his hearers, and during the two years he 
held the position of their pastor he steadily grew 
in mental and moral stature. 

Still there was one trouble which vexed him in 
his pastorate. His hearers had known him as a 
boy ; and he came to preach to them as a grad- 



Thomas Starr King. 



xvii 



uate, not of the college and divinity school, but of 
the dry-goods store and the Navy Yard. Then 
he was the least clerical, in the formal sense of 
the word, of human beings ; and, indeed, so he 
continued to the end of his life. His inborn joy- 
ousness of temperament burst forth in the social 
meetings of the society, sometimes in all the fine 
extravagances of mirth ; and certain staid people 
probably shook their heads, when they saw their 
boyish-looking minister indulging in all the ex- 
uberance of boyish animal spirits. In the pulpit, 
by the beds of the sick and the dying, in all the 
scenes which test a minister's helpful sympathy 
with grief, suffering, penitence, or aspiration, he 
showed himself profoundly and tenderly serious ; 
in his articles in the Universalist Quarterly, and 
in his lecture on Goethe, he exhibited a serious- 
ness of the intellect the only fault of which was 
that it seemed to be beyond his years ; but in 
ordinary intercourse with his parishioners he rec- 
ognized no distinction between clergyman and 
layman, and never put on gravity when there was 
no gravity in the occasion. It was impossible for 
him to assume what he did not feel merely to 
accommodate himself to the etiquette of his pro- 
fession ; and his feelings were so acute that at 
the least call for a serious mood his flexible 
nature became instantly absorbed in it, and the 
tears would glisten in his eyes almost before the 
smile had left his lips. It did not require for 
this transformation the presence of calamity or 



xviii 



Memoir of 



sin ; the utterance of a noble thought, the sight 
of a great aspect of nature, would effect it. I re- 
member one occasion when I was his companion 
in a wagon, which he was driving through one of 
the roughest roads amid the wildest scenery of 
the White Mountains. The talk between us had 
been very hilarious, when suddenly we came upon 
a magnificent view. The reins quickly loosened 
in his hands ; his eyes, his whole countenance, 
became irradiated by that peculiar light which 
indicates the complete absorption of the soul in 
the beauty and grandeur it contemplates. After 
two or three tilts of the vehicle, each of which 
threatened its overthrow, I ventured to suggest to 
him that, as a clergyman, he doubtless had a 
proper and commendable disregard, if not con- 
tempt, for this life, but that, as a layman, it was 
not to be expected that I could fully share his 
theological feeling, or contemplate without appre- 
hension that abrupt close to my physical exist- 
ence which I saw was momentarily impending, 
and that therefore I should be much obliged if he 
would hand me the reins. This was said with all 
becoming mock gravity ; and he came back to 
individual consciousness with a burst of laughter 
which made the rocks and woods ring with merry 
echoes. Indeed, the tears and laughter, the so- 
lemnity and the hilarity, of this lovable creature 
came equally from his sympathetic heart. 

There was no positive discontent with King's 
preaching at Charlestown, and there could not be ; 



Thomas Starr King. xix 

for his reputation so steadily increased that, from 
the time of the second year of his ministry to the 
day of his death, he may be said to have had con- 
stantly in his pockets tempting invitations from 
other religious societies to leave the society he 
served. He was invited by the Unitarian Society 
in New York, of which Dr. Dewey had been the 
pastor, to be their minister, provided he would 
spend a year in the Cambridge Divinity School 
before he entered their pulpit. This offer, bur- 
dened with such a condition, King very properly 
refused to accept. Another call, from the Fourth 
Universalist Church of the same city, was also 
declined. The motive which really induced him 
to leave his Charlestown society was freely ex- 
pressed to me and to other friends. " The fact is, 
I feel," he said, " that there is a certain incon- 
gruity in my position there. I preach to mature 
and aged men and women, who have seen me as 
a boy in my father's pew, and who can hardly con- 
ceive of me as a grown man. I necessarily can- 
not command in that pulpit the influence which a 
stranger would wield. It is best for them that I 
should vacate the office, though they have always 
been kind and considerate to me, though my rela- 
tions to them are of the most pleasant nature, and 
though some of them are bound to me in the 
closest ties of personal friendship." 

Meanwhile the Hollis Street Church, a Unita- 
rian congregation of Boston, with a history behind 
it stretching back to the year 1732, and number- 



XX 



Memoir of 



ing among its former pastors such men as Mather 
Byles, Horace Holley, and John Pierpont, was 
earnestly desirous of obtaining King as its minister. 
The church had for some time been distracted 
by internal dissensions on questions of temperance 
and antislavery, and had suffered from many 
secessions. Indeed, it seemed that the organiza- 
tion which had endured so long was threatened 
with dissolution. But among its members was an 
able, learned, astute lawyer, Henry H. Fuller, an 
earnest Unitarian, and an equally earnest cham- 
pion of the Hollis Street Church. He could not 
endure the thought that the society should die, 
and he fixed upon the young Charlestown divine 
as the person to save it, never relaxing his efforts 
until he had succeeded. In the spring of 1848 
Mr. King was invited to be its pastor. He de- 
clined, after due consideration, in June of the same 
year ; and immediately after sailed for Fayal to 
recruit his health, which had been impaired by the 
studies, labors, and anxieties of his ministry. On 
his return the Hollis Street Society renewed its 
application j and Mr. Fuller, especially, never 
intermitted his arguments and appeals until he 
had convinced King that it was his duty to com- 
ply. On October 6, 1848, he accordingly accepted 
the call ; on the next day he notified his society, 
in a manly and tender letter, of the fact ; and on 
the first Sunday in November, a month before his 
installation, he assumed his new office. On the 
17th of December, eleven days after his installa- 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxi 



tion, he was married to Miss Julia Wiggin, of East 
Boston. 

His happy home in Boston soon became an 
intellectual centre, where many of the most dis- 
tinguished Unitarian and Universalist clergymen 
delighted to meet him and each other, and where 
his winning hospitality — a hospitality of the mind 
and heart as well as of the table, a hospitality 
which lavished on his friends everything he was as 
well as everything he had — delighted all who had 
the good fortune to partake of it. Thither also 
flocked numbers of young students of theology 
who have since become Christian forces, and also 
hundreds of miscellaneous persons who were in 
need of his help, his counsel, or a portion of his 
ever-slender stock of money. His door, indeed, 
stood wide open to everybody who sought either 
his companionship or his aid. It was a common 
occurrence that while dictating a sermon to his 
amanuensis he would be called to leave his work 
in order to welcome a visitor, sometimes a com- 
mon beggar, sometimes a doctor of divinity ; and 
after an hour or half an hour had elapsed he 
would return serenely to the library, and proceed 
to finish the half-completed sentence which the 
visitor had interrupted, though it seemed so en- 
tangled in commas or semicolons as to demand 
an entire recasting. Indeed, his sweet and gentle 
patience was proof against every annoyance, even 
of that annoyance which is found to irritate the 
temper of the saintliest thinkers, namely, the vio- 



xxii 



Memoir of 



lent entrance into the scholar's study, sacred as it 
should be to devout and silent meditation, of those 
sacrilegious thieves of time who labor under the 
double condemnation of being at once intrusive 
strangers and voluble bores. During the eleven 
years of King's ministry in Boston it is probable 
that not a single person, however low down in 
the scale of being, ever left his cordial presence 
with a sensible diminution of his self-respect. 

Had the new minister adequately understood 
his task he would not have undertaken it. He 
preached to a remnant of the old powerful soci- 
ety, and he might properly have taken for the 
text of his first sermon that which Dean Swift 
was said to have selected when he preached before 
the Worshipful Society of the Tailors, namely, 
" A remnant of ye shall be saved." In his 
"Words at Parting," in 1859, he confessed that 
if he had known "the precise state of the case, — 
how few of the pews were rented, how strong was 
the prejudice against the church and the very 
building on account of the long troubles, and 
how little hope for the future of the parish was 
felt outside of the committee that conducted the 
correspondence with him, — he would not have 
dared so great a venture as an acceptance of the 
call." But Mr. Fuller was right in peceiving that 
all that was needed to draw a society together 
was a magnet. In a comparatively short time the 
empty pews began to fill, and a new and strong 
society was established on the ruins of the old 



Thomas Sta?'r King. 



xxiii 



one. The pastor gave the parish eleven years of 
his life ; and could justly congratulate himself, in 
the last sermon he delivered in the church, on 
speaking to five times as many parishioners as 
listened to his first. The reason for this growth 
is not to be found in the preacher's accommodat- 
ing himself to the opinions and prejudices of his 
congregation, for he was repeatedly driven by a 
sense of duty to proclaim unpalatable and unrec- 
ognized principles which hurt the feelings of many 
of those who could not help loving, admiring, and 
respecting him ; but it was due to the organizing 
power in the individuality and soul of the pastor 
himself. " Preaching the truth in love," he could 
safely surrender himself to any impulse of right- 
eous wrath without debasing it by any intermix- 
ture of moral malignity. It was impossible for 
him not to preach politics from the pulpit, because 
from 1850 to i860 politics had invaded the prov- 
ince of morals and religion. The questions up 
for discussion did not relate so much to render- 
ing unto the American Csesar the things that 
were Caesar's, as to the pretensions of the Ameri- 
can Caesar to occupy the domain of those things 
which were specially reserved as "the things" 
appertaining to God. Among these were the re- 
sistance to the Free Soil Movement ; the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law ; the Dred Scott Decision • the 
elaborate attempts of politicians to introduce 
into politics the idea that the Bible sanctioned 
slavery, and that Christ came, not more to save 



xxiv 



Memoir of 



the souls of whites than to enslave the bodies of 
blacks ; that it was impertinent in clergymen to 
doubt that human brotherhood and the father- 
hood of God were to be interpreted in a sense 
which would not interrupt cordial business rela- 
tions between the North and the South ; and that 
the pulpit was to be silent while the principles 
of Christian morality and Christian philanthropy 
were violated in the maxims of liberticide which 
guided the dominant politics of the country, and 
inspired many of the acts of its administration. 

On such themes as these Starr King preached 
as duty impelled him to preach, and as events 
furnished him with the appropriate occasions for 
manly utterance. It was understood that his 
resignation, if offence was taken, was always at 
the disposal of the Parish Committee. The most 
powerful of his sermons of this kind was that on 
the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred 
Scott case. The dissenting opinion of Mr. Jus- 
tice Curtis, questioning the truth of the facts as 
well as the validity of the reasoning on which the 
majority of the court relied, gave him the shelter 
of that eminent jurist's authority for the sound- 
ness of his arguments. He was thus enabled to 
allow free way to the rush of righteous wrath 
which urged him to stigmatize what he considered 
the enormous crime of a court of justice passing 
beyond the proper limitations of the case before 
it in order gratuitously to legalize lies and insti- 
tute iniquity. In the delivery of parts of this dis- 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxv 



course his auditors had at least the opportunity 
to learn that their minister was a greater orator 
than they hitherto had dreamed. At times his 
ruddy face became white under the impatient 
pressure of the moral passion which filled his 
soul ; his eyes shone with a lustre that had never 
been seen in them before ; and tones came from 
his voice which surprised those who were most 
familiar with its range and power. Some of his 
friends in the society doubtless felt hurt at such 
an outburst from the pulpit, dauntlessly arraign- 
ing the majority of the Supreme Court of the land 
as betrayers of justice for a political purpose ; but 
nothing was said to indicate that there would be 
any falling away of parishioners, or that the inde- 
pendent minister would have the slightest cause 
to send in his resignation. 

Indeed, the pulpit of the time was so thor- 
oughly abolitionized that it was hardly possible to 
obtain a clergyman, to whom people would con- 
sent to listen, who was not tinctured with anti- 
slavery opinions. King used to tell a story of a 
proslavery acquaintance of his, who lived in one 
of the towns adjoining Boston, and who was 
mourning over what he called the "nigger" ha- 
rangues that he had to hear, Sunday after Sun- 
day. " Why did you settle him ? " King asked. 
" Well," was the despairing reply, " we found that 
we must have either an abolitionist or a darned 
fool, and you must feel, Mr. King, that we 
could n't have a darned fool, — now could we?" 



xxvi 



Memoir of 



It is needless to add that King solaced him as 
well as he could, ironically sympathizing with the 
dilemma in which the parish was placed, and as- 
suring him that, on the whole, he thought it 
would be better for them to have a bright preach- 
er of righteousness, who might occasionally make 
them scream, rather than a stupid preacher of 
unrighteousness who would constantly make them 
yawn. 

The truth is, that the Hollis Street Society, 
though made up of persons of widely different 
varieties of political opinion, loved its pastor, and 
could not help loving him. The acuteness of 
moral sensibility, the depth of tender feeling for 
the suffering, the aggrieved, and the oppressed, 
which impelled him on certain occasions to assail 
pernicious political tendencies and bad acts of 
the government, were unintermittingly displayed in 
his personal sympathy with all the members of 
his parish who were tried by those afflictions 
which specially test the heart and soul of the min- 
ister. He was cheer to the despondent, hope to 
the despairing, comfort to the mournful, fellow- 
ship to the desolate. The words he uttered from 
the pulpit were inspiring and full of spiritual nutri- 
ment ; but the words he breathed into the ears of 
the remorseful and the penitent, the words he spoke 
in the chambers of the sick and over the coffined 
remains of the dead, were the words which bound 
him most intimately to those of his society who 
had been bowed down by those afflictions of life 



TJwmas Starr Ki?ig. 



xxvii 



which fall on Democrat and Republican alike. 
And then, in his ordinary visits to the homes of 
his parishioners, it was felt that he brought the 
outer sunshine with him into the room ; or, 
rather, it may be said, he brought with him the 
finer and rarer sunshine of the soul. The com- 
plaint of those members of his parish who were 
sometimes disturbed by his emphatic utterance 
of antislavery opinions was not so much that he 
shocked their political creed, as that his engage- 
ments as a lecturer interfered with the frequency 
of his visits to their homes. 

His parish, therefore, understood him. Its 
members instinctively felt that it pained him to 
give pain to any of them, and that, if he affronted 
their political prejudices, he did it from the same 
humanity which led him to sympathize so cor- 
dially with them in their hours of sorrow and 
calamity. They also came to know that his spir- 
itual was so exquisitely connected with his bodily 
organization, that any wrong done to a person or 
a class or a race, any insult offered, in a legisla- 
tive assembly or on a bench of judges, to a great 
moral principle or philanthropic aspiration, gave 
him exquisite physical pain. His body instinc- 
tively responded to any wound inflicted on his 
soul. When he read of an outrage committed in 
a Southern State on the rights of the negro, his 
imagination at once realized the scene. He 
changed places with the sufferer, and became 
himself the victim of the brutality he abhorred. 



xxviii 



Memoir of 



His own flesh quivered under the lash which ftll 
on the back of the slave. When Anthony Burns 
was marched through the streets of Boston to be 
returned to his owner, Mr. King probably en- 
dured a sharper mental agony than cut into the 
soul of the poor bondman who was made the 
centre of the spectacle. At times this sensibility 
to the woes of others was not confined to persons 
whose sufferings were unjustly inflicted. I can- 
not call to mind what his general opinions were 
on the question of capital punishment ; but one 
afternoon, in a company assembled at a house by 
the sea-shore, the newspapers arrived with the de- 
tails of the execution of a convicted murderer, who 
certainly deserved hanging if hanging were justifi- 
able under any circumstances. The guests were 
merciful people, yet each seemed to read his paper 
with a kind of moral satisfaction that justice had 
been done to such a criminal. After King had 
read a dozen sentences, I noticed that the jour- 
nal slipped from his hands, the blood all at once 
dropped out of his cheeks, a faintness seized him 
as if he had been stricken with a deadly sickness 
at his heart, and he silently withdrew from his 
companions, incapable either of objecting to their 
judgment of the case or of sympathizing with it. 
He was evidently overcome by the horror of con- 
templating the scene at the gallows, as it was 
vividly reproduced by his imagination, and by the 
additional horror of thinking of such a darkened 
soul passing into the mysterious region beyond 



Thomas Starr King. xxix 



the grave without exhibiting the remotest sign of 
possessing a moral nature. A minute before he 
had taken up the paper he was in his most hilari- 
ous mood ; but when he reappeared, after an 
hour's absence, there was no mirth in him, and 
no mirth to be extracted from him. He re- 
mained listless and unnerved during the whole 
evening. The company was joyous ; but the 
criminal dangling on the gallows was still visible 
to his mental eye, and his thoughts were evi- 
dently far off from the merry noise sounding in 
his ears, and fixed, in a kind of wondering de- 
spair, on what was occurring to the soul of the 
reprobate, thus ignominiously released from its 
mortal tenement of clay to meet its Creator and 
Judge. 

It is not to be understood that the main pur- 
pose of Mr. King was to criticise political parties 
from his pulpit. The vast majority of the two hun- 
dred sermons which have passed under the eye 
of the present editor are devoted to the incul- 
cation of the principles of practical and spiritual 
Christianity, as they relate to the right method 
of building up Christian character in the indi- 
vidual soul. They were intended to meet the 
wants of the members of his congregation in 
everything that respected their conduct in private 
life and in the pursuits of business. They were, 
in the most intense New England meaning of the 
word, "searching" sermons. Frivolity, selfishness, 
envy, malice, avarice, inhumanity, licentiousness, — 



XXX 



Memoir of 



all sins, indeed, which interposed a screen be- 
tween the human soul and God, — were relent- 
lessly exposed by an analysis which pierced down, 
through layer after layer of religious self-deception 
and self-satisfaction, to the ugly vice nestling in 
seeming security beneath the smooth and elegant 
proprieties which hid it - from ordinary view. To 
awaken every boy and girl, every man and woman, 
who listened to him, to a consciousness of their 
sins of commission and omission was the object 
of this Christian pastor ; and his way of doing it 
was by appealing to the reason which underlies 
passionate unreasonableness, to the good will par- 
tially suppressed by self-will, to the possibilities of 
the soul for good amid all its wild-deviations into 
evil. He specially relied on his power of per- 
suading those who would have been proof against 
all invective. By an imagination which ever duti- 
fully accompanied his probing analysis, he vividly 
exhibited the horror of the state of sin, — its 
aridity, barrenness, hopelessness, helplessness, the 
absence in it of real life when physical existence 
is shut out from the freshening life which God 
pours into souls which strive to be in harmony 
with him ; and then, with the same vitalizing im- 
agination, he pictured the bliss of beings that, even 
on this earth, anticipate the " beatitude past utter- 
ance " of the heavenly state, by receiving through 
their senses, through their intellects, through their 
hearts, through their souls, the messages which 
the Divine Spirit sends to them, not only in the 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxxi 



words of the Bible, but in the hues, sounds, and 
forms of the visible universe He has created. This 
was the dominant tone of his preaching ; but he 
was also ever ready to defend, by argument and 
by ingenious interpretation of Scripture texts and 
the facts of ecclesiastical history, the reasonable- 
ness and duty of forming such congregations of 
Christian worshippers as the one he specially ad- 
dressed, — a congregation which stood as a rep- 
resentative and result of the Unitarian and the 
Universalist revolt against the dogmas of the large 
majority of Christian churches. As a theological 
controversialist, however, he was more comprehen- 
sive than the great body of the denominational 
ministers with whose doctrines he agreed. He 
was tolerant of dogmas which he could not ac- 
cept, because he tried to understand what he criti- 
cised. His first question, when he prepared to 
assail an "orthodox" doctrine, was this: "Out 
of what needs or experiences of human nature 
did this dogma spring ? " There is a latent mod- 
esty observable under his most vehement affirma- 
tions of the validity of his own conceptions of 
theological truth. At least, he always attempted 
to account for the origin of the beliefs he aimed 
to overthrow. 

Perhaps his full effectiveness as a pastor was 
somewhat impaired by the circumstances which 
impelled him to become a lecturer before lyceums. 
His popularity as a lecturer was very great \ his 
lectures extended his real parish east from Boston 



xxxii 



Memoir of 



to Bangor, and west from Boston to Chicago; 
but he lectured at the period when a fee of ten or 
fifteen or twenty-five dollars was considered an 
adequate remuneration for a discourse delivered 
within twenty miles of Boston, and a fee of fifty 
dollars for one delivered in Albany, Syracuse, or 
Buffalo. The result was, that, though he labored 
hard and was warmly applauded, he received dur- 
ing a whole season less than lecturers of his high 
rank now sometimes receive in a month. He 
began with a lecture on " Goethe." During the 
whole term of his settlement over Hollis Street 
Church he was overwhelmed with invitations. 
His lecture on " Substance and Show " almost 
equalled in popularity that of Wendell Phillips on 
"The Lost Arts." The subjects he afterwards 
selected, such as " Socrates," " Sight and Insight," 
"The Laws of Disorder," obtained an almost 
equal reputation. But lecturing, though it may 
seem to be the mere amusement of the leisure of 
a professional man, is, when followed up night 
after night, a terrible drain on the physical vitality 
of the most robust constitutions. The addition 
to Mr. King's income was comparatively small, 
amounting perhaps to fifteen hundred dollars an- 
nually, or about a fourth of what a lecturer of 
equal popularity would receive now. This sum 
was gained at the expense of deducting many 
years from his invaluable life. The mere speak- 
ing was the least part of the exhausting labor 
The journeying from place to place; the passage 



TJwmas Starr King. 



xxxiii 



from lecture-rooms stiflingly hot to sleeping-rooms 
bitterly cold ; the loss of appetite or the absence 
of the proper food to gratify it ; the inevitable 
coughs and colds resulting from necessary expos- 
ure ; the disturbance of the whole system arising 
from the breaking-up of all the habits of ordinary 
life ; the long, vacant days in the cars, with the 
head in the torrid and the feet in the frigid zone ; 
the constant fret and anxiety lest something might 
be going wrong in his home or his parish, and 
he a hundred or a thousand miles away, — these 
wore on a frame too delicately organized to stand 
such a strain on it without injury. But he knew 
that life was not given to him for the purpose of 
spending it even in enjoyments which are inno- 
cent and artistic ; and his cheery temperament 
converted drudgery itself into a kind of delight. 
As he was ever ready to lay down his life when 
the occasion demanded the sacrifice, so he was as 
ready to wear it out, at the call of duty, by the 
slow suicide of over-work. 

The summer vacations of Mr. King were spent 
either at Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann, or in some vil- 
lage in the White Mountains. After comparing, 
in alternate seasons, the sea-shore with the moun- 
tains, he at last decided for the latter as on the 
whole the more conducive to his health, both of 
mind and body. His usual summer residence 
was at Gorham, N. H. That village appeared to 
him a good place to reside in, and at the same 
time furnished an excellent point from which to 



xxxiv 



Memoir of 



make excursions into every valley and up every 
height of the whole mountain region. A series 
of Letters to the " Boston Transcript," edited by 
his friend and parishioner Mr. Daniel N. Haskell, 
ended in becoming the foundation of his pictur- 
esque volume, published in 1859, on "The White 
Hills." As this was the best of guidebooks, and 
at the same time a book which supplied visitors 
with all the emotions they ought to feel and all 
the imaginations they ought to shape, in viewing 
magnificent scenery, it at once became popular. 
It is still considered the most inspiring companion 
which a person of taste, feeling, and capacity for 
enthusiasm can take with him in exploring " the 
Switzerland of New England." 

Even the book on the " White Hills," however, 
abounding as it does in scenes of description which 
Ruskin might be willing to indorse for their truth 
to fact and truth to feeling, does not do full justice 
to Mr. King's experiences as a tourist. His eye 
for character was as keen as his eye for scenery ; 
and he could not be a week in any remote village 
before all its " originals " flocked to him, and were 
gently and benignantly tempted to unveil their 
natures to his sympathetic humor. He accord- 
ingly brought back from every vacation memories 
of a score of new characters, which, as he repro- 
duced them in all their mental and moral pro- 
cesses, and in all their peculiar ways of individ- 
ualizing the Yankee dialect, were recognized by 
his friends as little masterpieces of humorous 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxxv 



characterization. Indeed, if rightly disposed in 
an appropriate plot, they might have made the 
fortune of an American novel or comedy, solidly 
true as they were to our rustic or seafaring life. 
Nothing delighted him more than to come in di- 
rect contact with persons who had been all their 
days far away from the ordinary ministrations of 
religion, and who had hewn their maxims of eth- 
ics and metaphysics, of humanity and theology, 
out of their rude personal experiences in forcing 
a churlish soil to yield its reluctant harvest of 
grain, or in coaxing a pitiless ocean to yield its 
ever-fluctuating harvest of fish. Such men has- 
tened to King, the city clergyman, with the pur- 
pose at first of chaffing him as a clerical prig ; but 
his beaming face, the heartiness with which he 
sympathized with their hard lot, the joyous bursts 
of laughter with which he welcomed their rough 
satires on his profession, and the charming mod- 
esty with which, in a mountain region, he received 
the directions of an experienced woodman who 
was to guide him through an unfrequented forest 
up the side of a lone hill infested with bears and 
rattlesnakes, and, in a sea excursion, the teachable 
spirit in which he submitted to the dogmatism of 
a storm-tested fisherman, who offered to lead him 
safely through dangerous channels, enclosed by 
frowning rocks, to some obscure and unvisited 
cove, won him golden opinions from the rude 
companions with whom he associated. The usual 
compliment, vouchsafed by these primitive wood- 



xxxvi Memoir of 



men and fishermen to enterprising ministers of 
the Gospel who display coolness in danger and 
verve in all contingencies, was given to King. 
" He 's a parson," they growled, " and yet he is n't 
a confounded fool." Soon, however, the entire 
sympathy he displayed with their work and worth, 
his easy withdrawal of all claims to their respect, 
founded on the circumstance that he happened to 
be a clergyman, and the admiration he cordially 
expressed for their heroism in braving all dangers 
of the land and the ocean, led them soon to reveal 
to him the inmost feelings of their hearts and the 
deepest thoughts of their minds ; and they did it 
in grotesque phrases which indicated that words 
with them were identical with things. If, for ex- 
ample, a drought seemed to be making the fields 
desolate, the literary expression of King in noting 
the occurrence was translated by some old farmer 
into such an image as this : " Wall, the spring 
was rainy, you know, and the ground got cold and 
soggy. For the last week or two, you see, God 
has been moving his flatiron over it, and it '11 all 
come right in the end." In many cases King 
became the father confessor of the fishermen or 
mountaineers with whom he mingled ; and in 
opening their hearts, to him they forgot he was 
a parson, and confided in him simply as Starr 
King, — a good fellow, who appeared to feel his 
inferiority to them in all matters relating to the 
practical work of the world, and who was to be 
tolerated as a person who would learn in time the 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxxvii 



real meaning of life. The pupil of these rough 
instructors was meanwhile searching them through 
and through, and gathering every day a lesson in 
the varieties of human nature, and the difficulties 
which the thoroughly natural man, who has organ- 
ized his character by conflict with the forces of 
nature, and is perfectly contented with his par- 
tial victory over them, present to the Christian 
preacher who would introduce into squalid homes 
where God rarely enters, the hopes and joys of the 
Christian faith, — homes which he still knows to 
be the scene where harsh duties are rigidly per- 
formed and coarse charities freely dispensed. 

The natural consequence of Mr. King's benefi- 
cent activity, as pastor, preacher, lecturer, contro- 
versialist, and man of letters, was to give him a 
wide celebrity, not confined to the limits of his 
parish or his sect, but extending far beyond both. 
Many of the Unitarian societies out of New Eng- 
land may be classed as " struggling " societies. 
They are in continual need either of money to 
support struggling and straggling ministers, or, 
what is of much more importance, in need of 
ministers with sufficient eloquence and magnetism 
to organize into a compact, self-supporting body 
the scattered " liberal " forces of the communities 
into which they are considered to intrude. Some 
of the leading Unitarian divines regarded Mr. 
King as a man not only capable of sustaining a 
society but of building up one ; and probably 
if Dr. Bellows, who early discerned Mr. King's 



xxxviii 



Memoir of 



organizing power, could have had his way, the 
pastor of Hollis Street Church would have been 
despatched from place to place, having himself 
no abiding city, as a missionary of the Unitarian 
faith, moving from every town where he had estab- 
lished a struggling society on a strong foundation, 
to some other town where there was a society almost 
at the last gasp in its desperate struggle for exist- 
ence. Mr. King resisted all efforts to draw him, not 
only to such fields of labor, but to such large cities 
as Brooklyn, Cincinnati, and Chicago, where it was 
at different times supposed the cause of Unitari- 
anism needed his powerful support ; but the press- 
ure brought upon him to undertake the charge 
of the depressed church at San Francisco was, 
providentially, too strong for him to resist. He 
was convinced that it was his duty to accept the 
call. The members of his Boston church and 
congregation, while recognizing the force of the 
reasons which prompted his resignation, loved him 
too much to accept it. They could not consent to 
part with him permanently, and therefore granted 
him a vacation of fifteen months, with the under- 
standing that the society would have no " settled " 
minister until he had finally assured them that he 
could never return to that pulpit which they con- 
sidered his theological home. On Sunday, the 
25th of March, i860, he addressed to a crowded 
church his solemn and tender " Words at Parting." 
The editor of this volume was present on the 
occasion • and in a communication to a Boston 



Thomas Starr King. 



xxxix 



journal endeavored to state the feelings of that 
large number of Mr. King's friends who were not 
members of his society, while occasionally listen- 
ing to his discourses. They would, it was said, 
unanimously testify to the fact that, " rapid as had 
been the growth of his genius as a fervid and brill- 
iant preacher, it has been fully matched by a 
growth as rapid in his attainments as a theolo- 
gian ; and that his rhetoric, opulent as it was 
in all those picturesque images and vivid phrases 
which seize upon the fancy, was none the less 
the guarded expression of a large, clear, full, and 
well-disciplined mind. They could say that, excel- 
lent as were his powers of acquisition, of thought, 
and of speech, there was still something more ex- 
cellent in the genial, loving, cheerful spirit from 
which his powers derived their best life, drew their 
richest inspiration, and received their noblest im- 
pulse. They could point to a long service as a 
Christian minister, in which the pulpit had never 
been controlled by the pews, and in which the 
pews could never complain that any opinions, 
however unpalatable, had ever been tainted by 
acrid passions unbecoming a Christian minister to 
feel. They could bear their testimony that he 
had always been bold and independent, and at 
the same time been free from the wilfulness and 
malignity into which boldness and independence 
are sometimes stung by opposition. They could 
appeal to thousands in proof of the assertion that, 
though in charge of a large parish, and with a lec- 



xl 



Memoir of 



ture parish which extended from Bangor to St. 
Louis, he still seemed to have time for every good 
and noble work, to be open to every demand of mis- 
fortune, tender to every pretension of weakness, re- 
sponsive to every call of sympathy, and true to every 
obligation of friendship ; and they will all indulge 
the hope that California, cordial as must be the 
welcome she extends to him, will still not be able 
to keep him long from Massachusetts." I quote 
these forgotten sentences with a secret satisfac- 
tion, because they remind me that I did not wait 
until my friend was dead before expressing my 
earnest recognition of his admirable talents and 
virtues. The grave has no ears to hear the words 
of eulogy spoken over the coffined remains of 
what in life represented everything that was good, 
true, honorable, and just ; yet how often is honest 
and hearty recognition of noble souls a recogni- 
tion which might have cheered them in the hard 
work of living here, postponed to the day when 
the soul has disappeared from its mortal tenement, 
and the lifeless body alone receives the praise 
which should have been proffered to the living 
man ! 

On the day before he sailed from New York, on 
the nth of April, i860, Mr. King was specially 
honored by a " Unitarian Breakfast Reception," 
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. There were three 
hundred guests seated at the tables, and the ven- 
erable poet, William Cullen Bryant, presided. 
The speeches were all that could be desired, as- 



Thomas Starr King. 



xli 



suring the preacher that he carried with him to 
San Francisco the best wishes of the best men of 
the denomination. Two short sentences in the 
letter of the Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, one of the 
most intimate of his friends, condense the spirit 
which animated the whole assembly. " King," 
he wrote, " is with you for a parting word, and 
your fraternal benediction on his way. Happy 
soul ! himself a benediction wherever he goes, 
benignly dispensing the graces of his life wher- 
ever he carries the wisdom of his word." 

He appears to have enjoyed excellent health 
on his voyage. During the last two days of the 
passage from Panama to San Francisco the sea 
was very rough. On Friday, April 27, while the 
steamer was pitching under a heavy swell, King 
wrote the sermon which he intended to deliver 
on the approaching Sunday. He began to write 
at eleven in the morning, and finished the dis- 
course at nine o'clock in the evening. The 
manuscript is before me as I write ; and there is 
no evidence that the rolling of the steamer, as it 
ploughed through the huge Pacific waves, inter- 
fered any more with the certainty of his hand in 
giving distinctness to every letter of every word, 
than it interfered to disturb the sweet mental and 
moral calm of the religious mood which marks 
every sentence of the composition. He arrived 
at San Francisco in the afternoon of the next 
day, Saturday, April 28, i860. No preparation 
had been made for a service at the Unitarian 



xlii 



Memoir of 



Church ; but he insisted on preaching. A notice 
was accordingly inserted in a newspaper pub- 
lished on Sunday morning, and the building was 
thronged with eager and curious listeners. The 
sermon was by no means one that did justice to 
his powers; but it was so comprehensive in spirit, 
and so tolerant and generous in tone, — the char- 
acter and soul of the man were so genially ex- 
pressed in it, — that every thoughtful hearer felt 
that a new spiritual force was added to the com- 
munity. He fascinated his auditors from the first ; 
and as, Sunday after Sunday, he poured forth his 
persuasive, kindly, and manly eloquence on the 
highest themes of spiritual and practical religion, 
the pews were soon occupied by permanent mem- 
bers of the society, and a Unitarian church was 
rapidly organized, which in the course of a year 
became one of the most prominent and most effi- 
cient of the ecclesiastical organizations of the 
city and the State. It was not long before the 
project of a new edifice was started, large enough 
to accommodate all the disappointed applicants 
for pews in the old one. The lot was purchased ; 
the plan of a costly and beautiful edifice was ap- 
proved ; and on the 3d of December, 1862, its 
corner-stone was laid. The pastor by this time 
was recognized as the foremost pulpit orator of 
the State. It is to be said, however, that the 
majority of the sermons which gave him this 
prominence had been written for his society in 
Hollis Street. Of the twenty-two discourses 



Thomas Starr King. 



xliii 



printed in this volume sixteen were first preached 
in Boston, and most of these were twice repeated 
in San Francisco. 

But his influence was not confined to those who 
sympathized with his theological opinions. As 
a lecturer he was welcomed everywhere and by 
everybody. His knowledge, wit, humor, fancy, 
the fervor of soul which animated his fertile and 
fertilizing thought, and the magnetic force of his 
character, gave to his lectures the rare quality of 
being universally attractive, — an attractiveness 
felt as much by the rough miner as by the most 
cultivated inhabitant of San Francisco or Sacra- 
mento. 

The great occasion, however, which raised Mr. 
King to the position of the foremost citizen of 
California, was the outbreak of the Rebellion. 
As early as February, 1861, he commenced his 
assaults on secession by a lecture on " Washing- 
ton " ; this was followed in March by one on 
" Daniel Webster and the Constitution of the 
United States " ; and in April by one on " Lex- 
ington and Concord." These were delivered in 
various parts of the State, and were received with 
immense enthusiasm. On the 19th of May he 
announced to his church what course he should 
pursue, both as a clergyman and as a citizen, as 
long as the war lasted. His topic was " The 
Great Uprising." The whole sermon indicates 
" a great uprising " of King's latent capacity 
for moral and Christian indignation, for righteous 



xliv 



Memoir of 



wrath. After emphatically declaring that it is 
the duty of a Christian minister to feel no per- 
sonal animosity to any human being, he distin- 
guishes between a wrong done to himself and a 
wrong done to the community. He illustrates 
the distinction in this reference to the President 
of the Confederate States : " He is a representa- 
tive to my soul and conscience of a force of evil. 
His cause is pollution and a horror. His banner 
is a black flag. I could pray for him as one man, 
a brother man, in his private, affectional, and 
spiritual relations to Heaven. But as President 
of the seceding States, head of brigand forces, 
organic representative of the powers of destruc- 
tion within our country, — pray for him ! — as 
soon as for antichrist ! Never ! " It would, he 
added, be as incongruous to pray for him as he 
prayed for Abraham Lincoln, as it would be for 
an English churchman, during the Sepoy rebel- 
lion, to have prayed for Queen Victoria and Nina 
Sahib in the same breath. The close of his ser- 
mon solemnly echoed the tone that rang through 
the paragraphs preceding it : " God bless the Pres- 
ident of the United States, and all who serve with 
him the cause of a common country ! God grant 
the blessing of repentance and return to allegiance 
to all our enemies, even the traitors in their high 
places ! God preserve from defeat and disgrace 
the sacred flag of our fathers ! God give us all 
the spirit of service and sacrifice in a righteous 
cause ! Amen ! " 



Thomas Starr King. 



xlv 



To a friend in Boston he wrote : " What a year 
to live in ! worth all other times ever known in 
our history or in any other." 

The soul of this Christian patriot seemed to 
kindle into an ever-increasing blaze with the fuel 
which the events of the war supplied, and it con- 
stantly broadened as it blazed. Indeed, the only 
question started by his admiring friends was this : 
How long will this unwearied inward fire continue 
before it begins to consume the frail body which 
contains it ? 

There can be no doubt that King's whole na- 
ture grew larger during his California experience ; 
and, indeed, every "Bostonian Californian" insists 
that w r e who heard him only in New England have 
not the faintest idea of what King became after 
he had passed through the Golden Gate. In 
calmly reading the scores of patriotic sermons, 
lectures, and addresses which he wrote and deliv- 
ered in California, I think I understand what is 
meant by this statement. His personality cer- 
tainly became stronger, more confident, more 
energetic, and, on proper occasions, more reso- 
lute and defiant. He took his place in the new 
community as a self-reliant, individual power, de- 
termined to impress his thoughts and sentiments 
on all who listened to him ; and he was relieved 
from that pressure on spiritual self-assertion in 
the championship of noble causes, which weighs 
like an incubus on every latent capacity for lead- 
ership in such an organized society as that of the 



xlvi 



Memoir of 



old city he had left. It would have been impos- 
sible for King to develop in Boston the domi- 
nant individuality, the fearless free spirit, he ex- 
hibited in San Francisco. Any attempt of his to 
assume the position of a leader of public opinion 
in Boston would have been crushed by the mere 
superciliousness of the educated and fashionable 
classes. All that would be necessary to teach 
him his subordinate position would have been 
a few blandly ironical sneers, a little lifting of 
the eyebrows, a slight shrugging of the shoulders, 
and, in the clubs, an expression of apathetic won- 
der as to who was the Unitarian parson who 
talked in such "tall" language. But in a new city 
like San Francisco, in a new State like California, 
composed of heterogeneous elements of popula- 
tion all in a fluid condition, a man of mark in- 
stantly made his mark. The unorganized mate- 
rials of goodness and justice flocked to such a 
man as King as to a centre of goodness and jus- 
tice. The division line was not run between the 
cultured and the uneducated classes, but between 
well-meaning men and ill-meaning vagabonds and 
ruffians ; and such a nature as King's, when the 
Rebellion broke out, became at once a potent 
organizing force, uniting the coarsest-mannered 
delver in the mines, who had a heart and a con- 
science, with the most polite and cultivated mer- 
chant in San Francisco and Sacramento. The 
old Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, defined the 
universe as " a Becoming." The old cities of the 



Thomas Starr King. 



xlvii 



United States have "Become." California, when 
King entered it, was in a state of flux, — was 
" becoming." He stamped his mind, as far as he 
could, on the fluent mass, and it took more or 
less the shape which he strove to impress upon it. 
As far as regards the keeping of California loyal 
to the Union during the Civil War, he ranks at 
least in the first file of its eminent citizens. His 
reputation was not confined to the Pacific coast, 
but extended over the whole country ; and the 
name of Starr King was mentioned with admira- 
tion and respect wherever self-devoted patriotism 
was honored. 

There is hardly space here to enumerate even 
the titles of the sermons and political addresses 
which bear testimony to his efficient zeal for the 
cause of constitutional American liberty. His 
thanksgiving sermons for Union victories are not 
more notable than the sermons in which he urged 
his parishioners to keep their hearts strong under 
Union defeats. The titles of a few of his dis- 
courses will indicate the character of their teach- 
ing : " The Choice between Barabbas and Jesus," 
" The Fall of Dagon before the Ark," " The Trea- 
son of Judas Iscariot," "The Pilgrim Coloniza- 
tion," "Secession in Palestine," "The New Perils 
of the Nation " (November, 1862), and " The Na- 
tion's New Year " (1863). As to his political ad- 
dresses from the platform, they are too numerous 
to be recorded, but I will give the titles of a few 
of those which were most elaborately prepared : 



xlviii 



Memoir of 



" The Confederate States, Old and New (1776, 
1861)," "The Two Declarations of Independence 
(1776, 1 861)," "Rebellion Pictures from Paradise 
Lost," " Peace, and what we must pay for it," 
" The New Nation to issue from the War " (1862), 
and "American Nationality." In all these he 
struck at the vital fact of slavery as the disturbing 
element in our nationality, and was confident that 
it could not survive the success of the war. In a 
sermon in March, 1863, he said : " We must give 
up the idea that our cannon, seven times multi- 
plied, can avail, unless a principle loads and fires 
them." 

In all his political addresses he proved that he 
had penetrated into the inmost secret of the art 
of influencing a multitude. His method was to 
give a pointed, compact, rapid statement of the 
opinion of his opponents, and then answer it with 
an equally swift, condensed, and pointed rejoinder. 
A volume might be made up from his political 
sermons and orations which would be regarded as 
an excellent manual for new beginners who are 
desirous of learning the right method of produ- 
cing popular effects. On one occasion, when every 
seat in the building where he spoke was occupied, 
the aisles and entry packed, and a compact mass 
of people on the sidewalk, a tall rough miner on 
the extreme edge of the crowd, who was listening 
in an ecstasy of delight, nudged his shorter com- 
panion and exclaimed : " I say, Jim, stand on 
your toes and get a sight of him ! why, the boy is 



Thomas Starr Ki7iQ-. 

«_> 



xlix 



taking every trick ! " This was one of the occa- 
sions where he displayed his power of " replica- 
tion prompt and reason strong," after giving a 
lucid statement of opinions adverse to his own. 
His felicity in "taking every trick" in the argu- 
mentative game extended to every contrivance by 
which wit retorts on wit and ingenious fancy on 
arrogant assertion. The roughest example of this 
that I can find, in some fifty of his speeches, oc- 
curs in his Fourth of July Oration at Stockton, in 
1862, on "The New Nation to issue from the 
War." After denouncing the crime implied in the 
attempt to murder a nation, he adds : " Mr. Toombs 
said in Washington, at a dinner-party a little over a 
year ago, that he wanted it carved over his grave : 
'Here lies the man who destroyed the United 
States Government and its Capitol.' He cannot 
be literally gratified. But he may come so near 
his wish as this, that it shall be written over his 
gallows, as over every one of a score of his fellow- 
felons : ' Here swings the man who attempted 
murder on the largest scale that was ever planned 
in history ! ' " 

Mr. King was not content merely to proclaim 
and defend the general principles of loyalty to 
the threatened nation. He resolutely opposed 
every California politician whom he considered to 
be lukewarm, craven, or false in respect to the 
supreme duty of standing by the government in its 
years of peril ; and ten days before the election 
of October, 1863, he preached in his church on 



1 



Memoir of 



the " Moral Aspect of the Coming Election," 
stigmatizing the Rebellion as simply " the largest 
mob ever seen in history," and urging his listeners 
to vote Copperheadism relentlessly down in every 
place where it presented a candidate. In this 
close grapple with obnoxious politicians he of 
course made some honest and many unscrupulous 
enemies. As he spoke from political platforms in 
all parts of the State, he met occasionally with 
turbulent opposition. Indeed, effort after effort 
was made to put him down. Pistols were some- 
times levelled, sometimes snapped, at him, but the 
ruffians soon found that he paid as little heed to 
revolvers as an old Garrisonian abolitionist did to 
unsavory missiles hurled at his head. There is 
no case mentioned in which the orator did not 
triumph over every element of brutal opposition 
in the assemblages he addressed. As the wonder- 
ing and admiring miner said, in contrasting his 
small, frail body with his quick mind and pene- 
trating, resonant voice, " the boy took every trick." 
The honest, hard-fisted, good-hearted roughs were 
delighted with his manliness ; and the malignant, 
scampish roughs were compelled to slink away 
the moment they attempted to commit any out- 
rage on his person. 

Meanwhile his devotion to the task of building 
up his society seems hardly- to have been inter- 
rupted by his public performances. He wrote a 
series of eight able Sunday evening lectures on 
the controverted points between Unitarians and 



TJiomas Starr King. 



li 



their theological opponents. For the new church 
of his society he contributed a thousand dollars 
out of his salary ; and, in addition, wrote a series 
of six lectures on the leading American poets, 
Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell, 
in order to obtain the means (thirty-five hundred 
dollars) of purchasing an organ, which was his gift 
to the church. He was always ready to speak in aid 
of any of the benevolent associations of the city, 
and a dozen of such addresses, elaborately written 
out, remain among his manuscripts. In Novem- 
ber, 1861, he wrote a letter to the standing com- 
mittee of the Hollis Street Society, resigning his 
office as pastor of that parish, on the ground that 
duty to his new society would keep him at least a 
year longer in California. Of course his toils 
were telling terribly on his health. " I should be 
broken down," he wrote to an Eastern friend, " if I 

had time to think of how I feel, but I don't 

Leisure and rest, I fear, will not come to me this 
side of the grave." One of the noblest results 
of his labors was the influence he exerted in 
raising many hundreds of thousands of dollars 
for the Sanitary Commission, for which he lec- 
tured, not only in California and Oregon, but 
in Nevada and Washington. There can be no 
doubt that he was the most electric speaker on 
the Pacific coast, for he could not only open hearts 
but open purses, and money flowed in a golden 
stream wherever his appeal for charity was heard. 
The new church of his society was completed 



lii 



Memoir of 



towards the end of the year 1863, and on January 
10, 1864, he preached in it for the first time. The 
sermon is the last of those printed in the present 
volume. The church contained two hundred and 
eighteen pews, which .were rented, for the first 
year, for twenty thousand dollars. The "plate 
collections " were estimated at five thousand dol- 
lars. But there was a debt on the building, and 
the pastor was haunted to the day of his death 
by the spectre of this debt, as though it were a 
pecuniary obligation of his own. 

But the end of this bright and beneficent career 
was near at hand. Mr. King had very properly 
felt that it would be cowardly to spare his own 
life while he was constantly inciting others to sac- 
rifice theirs. From the moment of the breaking 
out of the Civil War he enlisted as one of the vol- 
unteers in the army of the nation. He wore out 
his life in the pulpit and on the platform, as those 
who were kindled by his eloquence might have 
wasted away their lives in unhealthy camps or 
thrown them away on battle-fields. He was early 
impressed with the idea that he should die before 
he arrived at the age of forty ; and his exhausting 
career in California made his prediction nearly true. 
His physical condition was such that it was impos- 
sible for him to resist the attack of any serious dis- 
ease. On Sunday, the 2 1st of February, he preached 
his last sermon from the text, " Behold I stand at 
the door and knock." This was a favorite dis- 
course of his, written as long ago as 1849. It 



Thomas Starr King. 



liii 



was twice delivered in Boston and twice repeated 
in San Francisco. On Friday, February 26, he 
complained of suffering from a sore throat, and 
said that he felt like " a sponge squeezed dry." 
His illness became so severe as to prevent him 
from preaching on the ensuing Sunday. His dis- 
ease was diphtheria, which rapidly did its work on 
his worn-out frame. On Friday, the 4th of March, 
his physician was compelled to tell him, in answer 
to his earnest question, that he feared he could 
not live half an hour longer. He received this 
death-sentence with the utmost calmness, and pro- 
ceeded at once to dictate his will, — a will singu- 
larly considerate to all who depended upon him, 
and thoroughly Christian in temper and tone. He 
was raised from his bed, and, with a book for a 
desk, signed it with a steady hand. By his bed- 
side were many friends, to whom he smilingly bade 
good-by. " I feel," he said, " all the privileges 
and greatness of the future." " I see," he again 
remarked, " a great future before me. It already 
looks grand, beautiful. I am passing away fast. 
My feelings are strange." He was asked if he 
had any special message for his Eastern friends. 
" Tell them," he replied, " I went lovingly, trust- 
fully, peacefully" ; and then added, " To-day is the 
4th of March ; sad news will go over the wires 
to-day." He then implored Mr. Swain, the chair- 
man of the parish committee, to see to it that the 
debt of the church was paid. " Let the church 
free from debt be my monument ; I want no bet- 



liv 



Memoir of 



ter. Tell them these were my last words, and say 
good-by to all of them for me." He was then 
asked : "Are you happy?" "Yes," he answered, 
" happy, resigned, trustful." Then he repeated 
the Twenty-third Psalm, " The Lord is my Shep- 
herd," emphasizing the verse, " Yea, though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil ; for Thou art with me ; Thy 
rod and Thy staff shall comfort me." Breathing 
more and more slowly, his life gradually ebbed 
away without a struggle or a pang.* Four years 
before he had passed through the Golden Gate 
of San Francisco to consecrate his life, as a Chris- 
tian patriot, to the service of his country and his 
God ; he now passed through another Golden Gate, 
which opened to him a region laid down in the 
charts of no geographer, but which, in ecstatic vis- 
ion, had long been visible to the eye of his soul. 

The funeral of Mr. King was a touching cere- 
mony, for it expressed the genuine grief of a 
great city at the departure of its greatest citizen. 
There is always a tendency, in the public funeral 
of an eminent man, to convert the occasion into 
a mere imposing spectacle for crowds to gaze at ; 
but in this instance the formalities were identical 
with the realities of sorrow. It was universally felt 
that a vital force, pledged to the cause of all that 
was noble, generous, and good, and which could 
not be replaced, had been withdrawn in the full 

* See Richard Frothingham's volume, " A Tribute to Thomas 
Starr King." 



Thomas Starr King. 



Iv 



sweep of its beneficent activity. To the throngs 
of persons who hastened to take a last look at 
the beloved pastor or friend, there was some- 
thing indescribably pathetic in the placid smile 
on the dead face, — the smile which was on the 
features when death approached, and which death 
itself had not power to efface. The flags at half- 
mast all over the city and in the shipping in the 
harbor ; the tolling bells • the melancholy minute- 
guns fired by direction of the authorities at Wash- 
ington ; the crowd of citizens, which not only filled 
the church but occupied, in a dense mass, every 
avenue to it, — all attested the grief of a commu- 
nity which really felt itself bereaved. That silent, 
respectful sorrow, hushing for the time the noise 
of traffic, and indicating that thousands of people 
who were utterly unknown to him mourned his 
death as though they had lost a personal friend, 
was the most fitting tribute that could have been 
rendered to Mr. King's genius and virtues. 

The present collection of Mr. King's sermons 
is selected from a very large number, and repre- 
sents the average excellence of his weekly dis- 
courses. It is intended that this volume shall be 
succeeded by one containing the ablest and most 
brilliant of his popular lectures before lyceums. 
In case, however, the specimens of his pulpit elo- 
quence now presented to the public should meet 
with a suitable recognition, it is proposed to follow 
them up with another volume, devoted, to similar 



Ivi 



Memoir of 



vital truths of experimental religion ; and still 
another volume, illustrating the ample learning, 
keen analysis, and disciplined dialectical power, 
which he brought to the discussion of those con- 
troverted points of theology in which the opin- 
ions of Unitarian and Universalist scholars and 
divines are most directly brought into contact 
and conflict with the opinions of their "ortho- 
dox " opponents. In looking over the yet un- 
published writings of Mr. King, the present editor 
has been led to the conclusion that, in fervid per- 
sonal religious experience as well as in theologi- 
cal knowledge and intellectual power, his position 
is properly in the front rank of liberal divines 
and controversialists, both as a thinker and as a 
force. Since Channing and Dewey, few Unita- 
rian writers have shown such a singular combina- 
tion of tender persuasiveness and resolute vigor 
as constantly appears in the unpublished sermons 
of Mr. King. Beneath the words of scores of 
discourses omitted in this collection, I have felt 
throbbing within the sentences the mind, heart, 
and soul of an exceptionally gifted man, who had 
the rare power of communicating the largeness, 
sincerity, generosity, and nobleness of his char- 
acter in every record of his spiritual experience 
and every utterance of his kindling thought. A 
denomination of Christians which slights the writ- 
ings of such a religious genius, bred in and nur- 
tured by its faith, is doomed. Indeed, the neglect 
of religious genius in any sect or church is a sure 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ivii 



sign of that religious mediocrity which is the fore- 
runner of spiritual death. Nothing more honora- 
bly distinguishes the Church of England than its 
solicitude to have the works of its great thinkers 
and divines, in presentable editions, constantly in 
the public eye, so that no layman can claim to 
have a knowledge of English literature unless he 
is familiar at least with the writings of Hooker, 
Taylor, Fuller, Barrow, South, Chillingworth, and 
Butler. 

Had Mr. King ever dreamed that his sermons 
would be published, he would have carefully re- 
vised them, especially in respect to their style. 
He early adopted the habit of dictating to an 
amanuensis. Though his discourses were care- 
fully thought out, and therefore by no means un- 
premeditated, they were still, as it respects their 
composition, essentially improvised. He did not 
believe — until he was forced into the practice in 
California — that he had the gift of speaking ex- 
temporaneously • but the truth is that, in the case 
of almost all the sermons in the present volume, 
he extemporized, as he walked the room, to the 
solitary penman who was taking down his words, 
though nothing would have induced him to speak 
without verbal preparation to his Sunday congre- 
gation. We often had friendly disputes as to the 
real value and usefulness of his habit of dictating. 
He contended that he brought out the leading 
idea of a sermon through all its various applica- 
tions to life, and sustained the general strain of 



Iviii 



Memoir of 



feeling animating his conception of the whole, 
much better by this method than he could have 
done by sitting down at his desk with his pen in 
his hand. He was right in this, for there was 
rarely any lack of symmetry in his most hastily 
prepared discourses. On the other hand, I main- 
tained that he lost in compactness many of the 
advantages he gained in "compass," — that his 
pen, when placed in his own fingers, not only hit 
on the best word or phrase to express his thought, 
but really deepened the thought by the pauses 
which composition exacts. The dispute culmi- 
nated late on one Sunday evening after he had 
delivered a carefully premeditated lecture on 
Hildebrand. I recklessly offered to distinguish 
among the prominent passages which were fresh 
in my memory those which he had himself written 
from those he had dictated to his amanuensis. 
Manuscript in hand, he laughingly defied me to 
undertake the task. By good luck I happened to 
be right in every guess. King, however, was so 
wedded to his favorite method of expression, was 
so modestly indifferent to literary fame in prepar- 
ing his pulpit discourses, and was so confident 
that they would never be published, that, even 
in repeating favorite sermons in San Francisco, 
he never made an alteration in the construction 
of an involved sentence, and rarely substituted a 
more striking and efficient epithet for the one he 
had first used in the fluent rush of extemporane- 
ous expression to his amanuensis. 



Thomas Starr King. lix 

As a result the critical reader will feel that 
some paragraphs in these printed sermons are 
too perplexed and involved in their expression. 
The occasions, however, are few, where this crit- 
icism can be made. The unity of the central 
thought and the general strain of eloquence by 
which it is enforced will strike the critic more 
than the occasional deviations from a scrupulous 
rhetoric. King's mode of composition led him 
into using long sentences. He seemed to have a 
special delight in lingering on dashes, commas, 
and semicolons, and to avoid as long as he de- 
cently could the pause of the period. Thomas 
Fuller, in speaking of Hooker, quaintly says : 
" His style was long and pithy, driving on a whole 
flock of several clauses before he came to the close 
of a sentence." But Hooker's long sentences are 
masterpieces of rhetorical art, and it is dangerous 
to attempt to drive on a " flock of clauses," unless 
the pen, obeying the mind, is a crook that keeps 
them in perfect order, and compels them to move 
in rhythmical cadences to a harmonious conclu- 
sion. Still, with all abatements, the style of these 
sermons would alone make them quite remarkable 
specimens of pulpit eloquence. The power of the 
preacher is recognized in his easy and masterly 
way of bending language to assume the shape of 
every subtle variation of his thought and every 
delicate shade of his feeling. The formal rules 
of rhetoric are evidently absent from his mind, as 
in glowing sentences, rich in allusion and imagery, 



lx Memoir of 

he pours out a stream of mingled reflections and 
emotions from his fertile intellect and beneficent 
heart ; but the result is generally a sermon which 
is not only spiritually inspiring but artistically 
excellent. 

Dismissing, however, the question of style, 
there can be little doubt as to the power and 
persuasiveness with which Mr. King enforces 
that element of Christianity which is at once its 
fundamental principle and its fundamental fact, 
namely, that the Spirit of God comes into vital 
communion with the souls of men. In this belief, 
at least, he is as evangelical as Jonathan Edwards. 
Throughout the sermons published in this volume 
it will be observed that the awful fact of this com- 
munion of the Infinite with the finite soul is held 
up as outvaluing all earthly blessings, and as con- 
stituting the utmost bliss that heaven can bestow. 
He was very familiar with all the arguments which 
in our day appear to demonstrate that the Infinite, 
whoever He is, or whatever It is, can never be 
known through the processes which necessarily 
limit human thinking ; but he steadily rejected 
the doctrine that the Infinite was therefore simply 
the Unknowable. God, infinitely distant from the 
human understanding, might still, in his view, be 
intimately near to the human soul. He knew it 
as a fact of personal experience. He thought it 
an impertinence to declare that God was neces- 
sarily unknowable because he could not be re- 
ceived through the logical faculty of the mind. 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ixi 



To his own mind, the reasonings of scientists were 
opposed to the notorious facts of Christian con- 
sciousness. While the limitations of human think- 
ing, as expounded by Sir William Hamilton or Her- 
bert Spencer, were defiantly thrown at his head in 
an assembly of eager disputants, he would listen 
with a placid, languid, jaded smile, indicating that 
he was spiritually bored by the discussion. I never 
remember an occasion on which he attempted to 
answer any of the arguments brought forward to 
show that the Infinite, if he existed, must still be 
utterly incapable of being perceived by a finite 
consciousness. But his indestructible faith was 
that a Personal God did, in some way, open a 
path for himself into the human soul, and that, 
through the highest spiritual affections, he found 
easy avenues of approach to every finite human 
being who was capable of saying " I am." This 
faith is dominant in all the sermons in the present 
volume ; and connected with it is the belief that 
God pervades every part of his creation, from the 
unseen minute atom which no microscope can 
detect, through all the visible kingdoms of nature, 
up to the souls of the greatest scientific and poetic 
interpreters of nature. To him God was every- 
where and in everything ; and yet He was not the 
impersonal Power of the pantheist, but a God 
who is an infinite " I " and not an infinite " It," 
— a God who personally loves and cares for 
every soul he has created. 

Connected with this faith was his conception 



Ixii 



Memoir of 



of Christ as God's special manifestation of him- 
self to humanity. In an unpublished sermon on 
" The Piety of the Heart," he speaks of God as an 
Infinite Christ. "Theologians," he says, "have 
quarrelled bitterly, and are quarrelling now, over 
the rank of Jesus, and yet there is one sense in 
which we must all believe that Christ is God, or 
our Christianity is of too low a type to deserve 
the name. Not as to the scale of his nature, but 
as to the essential qualities of his spirit, we must 
believe that Christ is the expression of the govern- 
ment of the universe. What Christ was in finite 
measure, under the limits of time, and in a human 
career, God is, without limits, unfathomably and 

forever This is the great gain the world 

has made through Christianity, that it puts God 
into expression, makes him human, authorizes the 
sweetest affections of our nature to speak for him, 
brings him into society with us as a power and 

charm for the human heart There was no 

manifestation of God to the heart of humanity 
till Christ walked in Palestine, and said, ' He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father,' and 
lived a religion of pity, tenderness, and sacrifice. 
God became human then, and the extent of our 
Christianity is measurable now by the fulness of 
our faith that God is an Infinite Christ ; that he 
has purposed nothing and will do nothing against 
humanity that could not have originated in the 
pitying mercy of Jesus ; and that the sacred 
beauty of that patience, sympathy, and charity 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ixiii 



was made to glow in history, that its colors might 
be reflected back over the whole Infinite, so that 
the human heart might know its God, and be 
saved from the impiety of ignorance and from 
despair." 

The question of miracles troubled Mr. King 
but little. The real miracle to him was the char- 
acter of Christ. The question whether God would 
interfere with the laws of the natural world was 
subsidiary, in his mind, to the palpable fact that 
in sending Christ into the world he had interfered 
with the order, or rather the disorder, of the moral 
world. He says in one of his sermons that, if 
he had lived at the time Christ appeared, he 
was sure he would have witnessed the eyes of the 
blind Bartimeus opened, or the daughter of Jairus 
raised from the dead, with less wonder than he 
would have experienced in listening to the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. The opening of the blind 
bodily eye was less marvellous than the opening 
of the blind spiritual eye, and the resurrection of 
the body, in this sphere of life, less amazing than 
the resurrection of souls that appeared to be dead, 
though clothed in living forms. The power to 
awaken a soul — a soul buried in foul and sloth- 
ful habits, or, if not altogether dead, still "rot- 
ting half a grain a day " — was the miracle which 
would have attracted his attention then, just as 
much as it attracted his attention eighteen hundred 
years after the power had first been exercised. 

With these convictions, the paramount idea in 



Ixiv 



Memoir of 



Mr. King's sermons is the unity of spiritual life. 
He refused to make the broad distinction, which 
is prominent in most theologies, between present 
and future existence. Life was one in eternity as 
in time, and to get life, and to get it " more abun- 
dantly," was our duty in this world, as it would be 
our bliss in the world to come. In the sermons 
printed in the present collection on " Christian 
Thought of Another Life," " True Spiritual Com- 
munications," "The Divine Estimate of Death," 
" Deliverance from the Fear of Death," and " The 
Distribution of Sorrows," it will be seen with what 
tenderness, yet still with what austerity, he shows 
that "the solemnity of religion attaches not to 
death, but to character"; that physical life is, in 
the eye of God, a trifle of small account ; that 
the tomb is simply " the robing-room " of the 
spirit in entering upon a new but strictly continu- 
ous existence ; that what is called hardship is the 
condition of saintship ; that many apparently good 
people here " suffer for the want of suffering and 
that the distribution of sorrows, cruel and unjust 
if our life is restricted to this earth, will be found 
to be beneficent and equitable in the continuation 
of life after the encumbrance of the body has 
been dropped at the grave. The passages in 
which reference is made to our occupations in the 
next stage of existence are specially significant 
and suggestive. The most austere of these ser- 
mons, that on " The Distribution of Sorrows," was 
repeated in San Francisco on the Sunday when 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ixv 



he went to his church from what he feared mijht 
be the death-bed of his beloved daughter. " Edith 
very sick," he wrote against the date marking its 
repetition. Those who know the depth and ten- 
derness of Mr. King's domestic affections can 
alone realize the intensity of personal grief with 
which he penned that simple record. 

All the sermons here printed are alive with 
evidences of Mr. King's love of nature, and of 
nature as the expression of the ever-living and 
beneficent God who created and sustains it. Its 
laws, forms, hues, and sounds became, to him, 
symbols of moral truths, — in fact, words of a su- 
persensuous language which only a devout spirit 
could intelligently read. He eagerly devoured 
all the books of popularized science written by 
masters in their several provinces of investiga- 
tion. His imagination was particularly impressed 
by the vastness and grandeur of the universe as 
revealed by astronomy. All the scientific infor- 
mation he acquired passed rapidly through a 
process by which it was first idealized and then 
spiritualized. The reader will note this three- 
fold view of nature — scientific, poetic, and re- 
ligious — as characterizing all the sermons in this 
volume ; but it specially appears in the sermon 
on "The Comet of 1861," and in the sermons en- 
titled " Lessons from the Sierra Nevada," " Re- 
ligious Lessons from Metallurgy," and " Living 
Water from Lake Tahoe." The latter is perhaps, 
in style and thought, the most exquisite of Mr. 



Ixvi 



Memoir of 



King's compositions. In all of them, however, 
the thoughtful reader will be impressed by the in- 
stinctive felicity with which he Christianizes every 
aspect of nature his eye perceives. 

But it will also be seen that in all these ser- 
mons everything is brought to bear on the abso- 
lute necessity of righteous conduct. Mr. King, 
while intensely sensitive to the joy of spiritual 
communion, was no epicure of spiritual emotion. 
The higher the point of contemplation he reached, 
the more efficient became the downward swoop of 
his mind on the iniquities of the world. Lessing, 
in contrasting the Christian speculation of his 
time with the vices of the period, once bitterly 
declared : " We are angels in our knowledge, but 
devils in our lives." King keenly felt this antithe- 
sis between thoughts and acts, between doctrines 
assented to by the reason and convictions which 
become motives to the will. In a lecture on 
" Ability and its Voices," he said : " It is an era 
in the pulpit when a man steps into it who can 
thoroughly vitalize the words which are offered to 
every pulpit speaker. There is nothing more for 
pulpit eloquence to do than to properly unfold the 
phrases that God is the sovereign and ruler of the 
universe, that God is love, that his Spirit strives 
with every soul. But if a man attempts to handle 
these words as outward things, as implements, he 
is pulled down by them. They are too vast and 
heavy to be wielded mechanically. It is only 
when the power of them has been transfused 



Thomas Starr King. lxvii 



through the man's nature, so that he becomes 
transparent with them, that the utterance of them 
changes from commonplace to the most thrilling 
and amazing truths that can be poured into human 
ears. Every preacher is appointed to revivify the 
word once spoken, and now cool within the cov- 
ers of the New Testament, — restore it as nearly 
as possible to its original temperature and glow." 
There is not a discourse in the present volume 
which has not for its object this vitalizing of Scrip- 
ture language, so as to quicken the spiritual prin- 
ciples underlying all efficient moral action, and 
of making virtue attractive as well as obligatory. 
He clearly saw that conduct was not much influ- 
enced by giving the most pointed statements to 
moral maxims, and by showing that vice was 
unreasonable as well as unrighteous. He fell 
back on the mighty doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
of God, a personal power, always knocking at the 
door of the human heart, always ready to enter 
and reinforce its struggles with iniquity by com- 
municating Divine strength, and only shut out by 
human folly, perverseness, and sin. Indeed, if 
one searcTied among the spiritual thinkers of Eng- 
land for an appropriate motto, which would fitly 
condense the animating thought of these sermons, 
he would find it in the thrilling sentence wherein 
Sir Thomas Browne expresses his belief in the 
communion of the Divine with the human mind 
as an awe-inspiring fact of human consciousness. 
" There is," he says with a sweet solemnity, " a 



Ixviii 



Memoir of 



common Spirit which plays within us yet makes 
no part of us, the Spirit of God, the fire and scin- 
tillation of that noble and mighty essence which 
is the life and radical heat of all minds ; and 
whosoever feels not the warm breath and gentle 
ventilation of this Spirit (though I feel his pulse), 
I cannot say he lives; for truly, without this, to 
me there is no heat under the tropic, and no light 
though I dwell in the very body of the sun." 

At the memorial service at Hollis Street 
Church, after the news of Mr. King's death was 
received, eloquent and touching addresses were 
made by his friends, the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin 
and the Rev. Edward E. Hale. Some remarks 
by the editor of the present volume, delivered on 
the same occasion, inasmuch as they happen to 
be devoted to a general review of Mr. King's 
character and career, are, by request, appended 
to this brief Memoir. 

I cannot doubt that all of you, friends and 
parishioners of Thomas Starr King, have felt 
how difficult it is to speak in detail of" the quali- 
ties of him, the mere mention of whose name so 
quickly brings up his presence in all its gracious 
and genial power, and his nature in all its ex- 
quisite harmony. He comes to us always as a 
person, and not as an assemblage of qualities ; 
and however precious may be the memory of par- 
ticular traits of mind or disposition, they refuse 



1 Jiomas Starr King. 



Ixix 



to be described in general terms, but are all felt 
to be excellent and lovable, because expressive 
of him. Others may attract us through the splen- 
dor of some special faculty, or the eminency of 
some special virtue ; but in his case it is the whole 
individual we admire and love ; and the faculty 
takes its peculiar character, the virtue acquires 
its subtile charm, because considered as an out- 
growth of the beautiful, beneficent, and bounte- 
ous nature in which it had its root. 

And here, I think, we touch the source of his 
influence and the secret of his power, as friend, 
pastor, preacher, writer, patriot, and — let me add 

— statesman. He had the rare felicity, in every- 
thing he said and did, of communicating himself, 

— the most precious thing he could bestow ; and 
he so bound others to him by this occupation of 
their hearts, that to love him was to love a second 
self. This communication was as unmistakable 
in his lightest talk with a chance companion as in 
that strong hold on masses of men, and power of 
lifting them up to the height of his own thought 
and purpose, which, in the case of California, 
will give his name a position among the moral 
founders of states. Everybody he met he uncon- 
sciously enriched ; whithersoever he went he in- 
stinctively organized. Meanness, envy, malice, 
bigotry, avarice, hatred, low views of public and 
private duty, all bad passions and paltry expe- 
diencies, slunk away abashed from every mind 
which felt the light and heat of that sunlike na- 



Ixx 



Memoir of 



ture stealing or streaming into it. Such evil 
spirits could not live in such a rebuking presence, 
whether it came in the form of wit, or tenderness, 
or argument, or admonition, or exhilarating ap- 
peal, or soul-animating eloquence. Everybody 
became more generous from contact with that 
radiating beneficence ; everybody caught the con- 
tagion of that cheerful spirit of humanity ; every- 
body felt grateful to that genial exorcist, who 
drove the devils of selfishness and pride from the 
heart, and softly ensconced himself in their va- 
cated seats. The wonder is, not that he raised 
so much for benevolent purposes, but that he did 
not make a complete sweep of all the pockets 
which opened so obediently to his winning appeal. 
Rights of property, however jealously guarded 
against others, were felt to be impertinent towards 
him ; his presence outvalued everything in the 
room he gladdened with his beaming face ; people 
were pleasingly tormented with a desire to give 
him something; for giving was so emphatically 
the law of his own being, he was so joyously dis- 
interested himself, that, in his company, avarice 
itself saw the ridiculous incongruity of its greed, 
and, with a grim smile, suffered its clutch on its 
cherished hoards to relax. 

And this thorough good-nature had nothing of 
the weakness, nothing of the cant, nothing of the 
fear of giving offence, nothing of the self-con- 
sciousness, nothing of the bending and begging 
air of professional benevolence, but was as erect 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ixxi 



and resolute as it was wholesome and sweet. It 
seemed the effect of the native vigor as well as 
the native kindliness of his cordial and opulent 
soul. It never cloyed with its amiability. It did 
not insult the poor with condescension, or court 
the rich with servility, but took its place on an 
easy equality and fraternity with all, without the 
pretence of being the inferior or superior of any. 
While he was too manly to ape humility, the 
mere idea of setting himself up as "a superior 
being " would have drawn from him one of those 
bursts of uncontrollable merriment, happy as child- 
hood's and as innocent, which will linger in the 
ears of friends who often heard that glad music, 
until the grave closes over them as it has over 
him. 

The expression of this nature through the in- 
tellect was as free from obstruction as through 
morals and manners. His mind, like his heart, 
was open on all sides. Clear, bright, eager, 
rapid, and joyous ; with observation, memory, 
reason, imagination, in full play ; with a glance 
quick to detect the ludicrous as well as the beau- 
tiful ; and with an analogical power, both in the 
region of fancy and understanding, of remarkable 
vivacity and brilliancy, — his intellect early fast- 
ened on facts and on principles with the delight 
of impulse rather than the effort of attention 
and will. In swiftness and exactness of percep- 
tion, both of ideas and of their relations, he was 
a marvel from his boyhood. Grasping with such 



Ixxii 



Memoir of 



ease, and assimilating with such readiness, the 
nutriment of thought, he made mind faster than 
others receive impressions. His faculties pal- 
pably grew day by day, increasing their force and 
enlarging their scope with every fresh and new 
perception of nature and books and men. He 
tasted continually the deep joy of constant men- 
tal activity. Who shall measure the happiness 
of that exhilarating sense of daily increase of 
knowledge and development of power ? — the 
sweet surprise of swift-springing thoughts from 
never-failing fountains, — the glow and elation of 
soul as objects poured in from without, and ideas 
streamed out from within ? His mind, as in- 
dependent as it was receptive, and as free from 
self-distrust as from presumption, never lost its 
balance as it sensitively quivered under the va- 
rious knowledge that went thronging into it ; for 
there, at its centre, was the judgment to dispose 
as well as the passion to know, and the sacred 
hunger for new truth and beauty never degen- 
erated into that ignoble gluttony which paralyzes 
the action of the intellect it overfeeds. 

There is something glorious in the contempla- 
tion of a youth passed in such constant, such 
happy, such self-rewarding toil. He had a natu- 
ral aptitude for large ideas and deep sentiments. 
His mind caught at laws immersed in bewildering 
details, — darted to the salient points and delved 
to the central principles of controverted ques- 
tions, — and absorbed systems of philosophy as 



Thomas Starr King. 



lxxiii 



hilariously as others devour story-books. The 
dauntless stripling grappled with such themes as 
Plato and Goethe, and wrote about them with a 
prematureness of scholarship, a delicacy of dis- 
cernment, a sweet, innocent combination of con- 
fidence and diffidence, which were inexpressibly 
charming. Throughout his career, in sermon and 
in lecture, this strong tendency to view everything 
in its principles was always prominent ; and as a 
popularize!" of ideas removed from ordinary appre- 
hension, — secreted, indeed, from general view in 
the jargon of metaphysics, — ■ he was, perhaps, 
without an equal in the country. 

It is hardly possible to say what this mind 
might not have grown to be, had not the drain on 
its energies begun almost as early as the unfold- 
ing of its faculties, had not the dissipation of 
power nearly kept pace with its accumulation. 
His time, talent, and sympathies were the prop- 
erty of all they delighted and benefited. The 
public seized on him at an early age, and did not 
loosen its grasp until within a few days of his 
death. His parish was not confined to this so- 
ciety, but covered the ever-enlarging circle of his 
acquaintances and audiences. The demands, 
accordingly, on that fertile brain and bounteous 
heart were constant and endless. We were al- 
ways after him to write, to preach, to lecture, to 
converse; we plotted lovingly against his leisure ; 
and as long as there was a bit of life in him, we 
claimed it with all the indiscriminate eagerness 



lxxiv 



Memoir of 



of exacting affection. As soon as a thought 
sprouted in his head, we insisted on having it; 
and we were all in a friendly conspiracy to prevent 
his exercise of that patient, concentrated, unin- 
terrupted thinking, which conducts to the heights 
of intellectual power. 

Perhaps his elastic mind might have stood this 
drain; but the mind is braced by the emotional 
forces which underlie it, and it was on these that 
his friends delighted to feed. His sympathetic 
nature attracted towards him the craving for sym- 
pathy in others ; and nothing draws more on the 
very sources of vitality, mental and moral, than 
this assumption of the sorrows, disappointments, 
miseries, and heart-breaks of others, this incessant 
giving out of the very capital and reserve fund 
of existence, to meet the demands for sympathy. 
I have sometimes seen him physically and morally 
fatigued and exhausted from this over-exertion of 
brain and heart, and have wondered why, if each 
found it so hard to bear his own burdens in 
silence, we did not consider the cruelty of casting 
the burdens of all, in one mountainous load, upon 
him. 

When we remember this immense readiness to 
give, this admission of the claims of misfortune 
and trouble to take out patent-rights on his time 
and sympathy, it is astonishing how much, intel- 
lectually, he achieved. This was owing not more 
to the fine quality of his intellect than to its mode 
of action; for deep down in the very centre of 



Thomas Starr King. 



Ixxv 



his being was the element of beauty, and this un- 
ceasingly strove to mould all he thought and did 
into its own likeness. It was not only expressed 
in fancy and. imagination, in the richness of his 
imagery and the cadence of his periods, and in 
that peculiar combination of softness and fire 
which lent to his eloquence its persuasive power, 
but it gave luminousness to his arrangement, 
method to his scholarship, consecutiveness to his 
argumentation, symmetry to his moral life. It 
abridged as well as decorated his work. Things 
that went into his mind huddled and confused, 
hastened to fall into their right relations, and 
harmoniously adjust themselves to some definite 
plan and purpose, as soon as they felt the dis- 
posing touch of that artistic intelligence to which 
all disorder was unbecoming as well as unsys- 
tematic. This quality of beauty, an element of 
his character as well as a shaping faculty of his 
mind, demanded symmetry in all things, — sym- 
metry of form in things imaginative, symmetry 
of law in things intellectual, symmetry of life in 
things moral. The besetting sins of the head 
and the heart appeared to him uncomely as well 
as wrong, and he avoided them through an in- 
stinctive love of the good and the fair. As much 
of our intellectual and moral effort is spent in 
removing obstacles and overcoming temptations, 
and as from this weary work he was in a great 
measure spared, the time saved was so many 
years added to his life. 



lxxvi 



Memoir of 



But it must be added that this pervading senti- 
ment of the beautiful did not make him one of 
those bigots of the ideal whom the deformities 
of practical life keep in a morbid state of con- 
stant moral or mental irritation. From the fret 
of this fine fanaticism, which always weakens the 
character it seemingly adorns, he was preserved 
by his exquisite, his delicious, sense of the ludi- 
crous. The deformed, when his eye sparkled upon 
it, hastened to change into the grotesque ; it 
acquired, indeed, a quaint beauty of its own ; it 
irritated, not his nerves, but his risibilities ; it slid 
into his loving heart, — always open to things 
human, — and was there nursed and cherished on 
the sunniest mirth and laughter that humorous 
object ever fed upon. For the morally deformed 
his whole being had an instinctive repugnance ; 
but when himself the mark at which meanness or 
malice aimed, he always seemed to me rather 
amused than exasperated. The oddity of the 
meanness, the strange futility of the malice,, af- 
fected him like a practical joke ; quick as light- 
ning to detect the base thing, he still dismissed it 
laughingly from his mind, with hardly the appear- 
ance of having suffered wrong, and certainly 
without any desire or intention to retaliate. No 
wound could fester in his humane and healthy 
soul. 

The love of the beautiful, to which I have re- 
ferred as so strong an element in his nature, was, 
as it regards natural scenery, most completely 



Thomas Starr King. lxxvii 



embodied in his eloquent book on the White 
Hills, a mountain region which will look the 
sadder to us now that the loving chronicler of 
its varying aspects of grandeur and grace, who 
has associated his own name with every valley 
and peak, will visit it no more ; but when his 
sermons and lectures are published, it will be 
seen how closely the beautiful in nature was linked 
in his mind with the beautiful in thought, in char- 
acter, and in action. He loved his theological 
calling, and it was his ambition to pay the debt 
which every able man is said to owe his profession, 
namely, to contribute some work of permanent 
value to its literature. Had he lived, he would, I 
think, have written the most original, the most 
interpretative, and the most attractive of all books 
on the life, character, and epistles of the Apostle 
Paul. But it was ordered that his life should be 
chiefly spent in direct action on men through 
speech and personal influence ; and theology 
might well wait for the book, when humanity had 
such pressing need for the man. 

I hardly know how to speak of his moral and 
spiritual qualities ; for, noble as they were, they 
were not detached from his mind, but pervaded 
it. Both as a thinker and as a reformer he was 
brave almost to audacity ; but his courage was 
tempered by an admirable discretion and sense 
of the becoming, and his quick self-recovery from 
a mistake or error was not one of the least of his 
gifts. He seemed to have no fear, not even the 



Ixxviii 



Memoir of 



subtlest form which fear assumes in our day, — 
the fear of being thought afraid. No supercilious 
taunt, or imputation of timidity, could sting him 
into going farther in liberal theology and reform- 
ing politics than his own intelligence and con- 
science carried him. Malignity was a spiritual 
vice of which I have sometimes doubted if he 
had even the mental perception. His charity and 
toleration were as wide as his knowledge of men. 
Controversy was a gymnastic in which he de- 
lighted to brace his faculties, but he could look at 
disputed questions from the point of view of his 
opponents, discriminate between dogmas and the 
holders of them, and assail opinions without un- 
wittingly defaming character. " Speaking the truth 
in love," was a text which he seemed born to 
illustrate ; and if, as a theologian, he did not per- 
ceive the moral evil of the world in all its ghastli- 
ness, it was because its most hateful forms stole 
away when he appeared, and, addressing what 
was good in men, the good went gladly out to him 
in return. His piety, pure, deep, tender, serene, 
and warm, took hold of the positive principles of 
light and beneficence, not of the negative ones 
of darkness and depravity, and — himself a child 
of the light — he preached the religion of spiritual 

joy- 

The rarity of such a character, and the wide 
influence it was calculated to exert in virtue of its 
native qualities, were only seen in all their beauty 
and might when he went from us to California 



Thomas Starr King. 



lxxix 



and we looked at him from afar. In four years 
he condensed the work of forty. The very genius 
of organization seemed to wait upon his steps. 
Men flocked to him as to a natural benefactor. 
As a clergyman, he built up the strongest church 
in the State, with an income the largest of any in 
the land. As a philanthropist, he raised for the 
most beneficent of all charities* the most munifi- 
cent of all subscriptions. As a patriotic Christian 
statesman, he included the real elements of power 
in the community, took the people out of the 
hands of disloyal politicians, lifted them up to the 
level of his own ardent soul, and not only saved 
the State to the Union, but imprinted his own 
generous and magnanimous spirit on its forming 
life. In the full speed of this victorious career, 
with the blessings of a nation raining upon him, 
he was arrested by death, — the rich and abound- 
ing life suddenly summoned to the Source of Life, 
and "happy to go." Human willingness could 
hardly answer the Divine Will with more perfect 
submission ; and it is not for us, who remember 
with what a shock of inexpressible grief and pain 
that unexpected departure smote the hearts of 
kindred and friends, but who also remember how 
often from this pulpit, and from his lips, we have 
been taught that the purpose of Providence in 
sending death is always beneficent, to doubt that 
the stroke, so heavy to us, so " happy " to him, 
was prompted by wisdom and love. Bowing be- 



* The Sanitary Commission. 



Ixxx Memoir of Thomas Starr King. 

fore that transcendent mystery, and not seeking 
to penetrate it, let us find consolation in the faith 
that this child of the light has been caught up 
into the Light Ineffable, that this preacher of 
the religion of spiritual joy has entered into the 
Joy of his Lord ! 



EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



" The man answered and said unto them, Why, herein is a mar- 
vellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath 
opened mine eyes." — John ix. 30. 



HAT a singular and interesting dispute 



V V concerning the claims of Christ was that 
from which the passage just read has been 
selected ! The parties concerned in it make it 
as remarkable as the suggestions which their 
discussion furnishes to our mind. On one side 
were learned and subtle men, who had made the- 
ology the study of their life, and who had argu- 
ments in favor of their system at their fingers' end. 
On the other side was a poor, despised, unlettered 
man, who could not appreciate the intricacies of 
systematic theology, and probably could not un- 
derstand the terms in which its principles were 
couched. The Pharisees denied vehemently the 
claims of Christ, and attempted to vilify his char- 
acter. The poor man strenuously and confidently 
defended both. But their discussion produced 
little effect upon each other, for they argued from 
different premises. The Pharisees judged Christ 




2 The Experimental Evidence 



by a theory. Because he did not fulfil their no- 
tions of what the Jewish Messiah should be, be- 
cause his career did not square with their inter- 
pretations of the prophecies and the traditions, 
because he held a different view from their own 
of the Sabbath and of the nature of religion, they 
rejected his claims with considerable scorn. These 
objections, however, did not touch the source of 
their opponent's convictions. He had experienced 
a most blessed and an enduring benefit from the 
divine power of Jesus. From his birth he had 
been blind. The world of forms and colors, the 
brilliancy of the dawn and the pomp of the sun- 
set and the dim grandeur of the starlit sky, the 
majesty of the hills, and the "pensive quietness" 
of the meadows,. and the faces of his kindred and 
friends, — all the varieties and glories of God's 
art had been to him as though they were not. 
He had grown to manhood in a rayless world. 
Christ had touched his eyes, and he saw. A new 
world was instantly open to him. He beheld a 
universe of which before he had no conception, 
and he felt that from that hour existence would 
bring to him infinitely greater joy. Is it any won- 
der, then, that the speculative objections of the 
Pharisees were powerless upon his soul? He 
owed a new being to the influence of Jesus ; every 
beautiful reality of nature which his unsealed eyes 
beheld attested the power of Christ, and he could 
only reply to the subtle insinuations of his ques- 
tioners, " Whether he be a sinner or no I know 



of Christianity. 



3 



not : one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, 
now I see." 

Here we see a practical conviction of the claims 
of Christ set against speculative doubts of those 
claims ; and so this dispute between the restored 
blind man and the Pharisees is a symbol of what 
often happens in the world. It would be easy to 
find men now who have doubts concerning Chris- 
tianity born of intellectual inquiry, which they find 
it impossible to appease • while there is another 
class of persons who feel a confidence in Chris- 
tianity born of inward experience, which it would 
be impossible to overthrow. And if two persons 
representing these two classes should meet and 
attempt a discussion, they could not understand 
each other, for their souls would not touch. The 
believing man could not confute nor dispel the 
doubts that would be reported to him by his op- 
ponent, because he had never felt those doubts, 
and could not judge of their validity. The scep- 
tical man could receive no immediate aid from the 
practical conviction of the believer, for that con- 
viction could not be translated from feeling into 
effective statement in words. One is troubled with 
doubts about the miracles ; the other can tell only 
of the sweet peace of Christian duty, and a sense 
of pardoned sin. One cannot see that the links 
are complete in the historical chain of evidence 
for the authenticity of the four Gospels ; the other 
can only answer that the words of those Gospels 
have nourished his soul, and made life, a more no- 



4 The Experimental Evidence 



ble experience and bereavement less painful and 
the tomb less dark. One cannot be entirely sure 
that such a person as Christ ever lived ; the other 
feels that it is his highest privilege to follow the 
spirit of the recorded Christ and to be a disciple 
of his published temper. One may anxiously be 
waiting for the last book by some great German 
theological scholar, to settle or confirm his waver- 
ing mind upon some point of the evidence ; the 
other strengthens his faith by the daily responses 
that are vouchsafed to Christian prayers. One 
questions from a darkened intellect ; the other 
answers from a sunlit soul. One cannot but say, 
from the force of the doubts which his philosophy 
has started, " As for this man Jesus, I know not 
from whence he is"; the other replies, "Why, 
herein is a marvellous thing, that you know not 
from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine 
eyes." 

It is implied in what we have now said that 
there are two lines of evidences for Christ and 
his religion, that are almost entirely independent 
of each other, one of which is addressed to the 
understanding, and the other to the soul. These 
two lines ought to blend together, and will come 
to a focus in a perfectly constituted faith ; but 
they will blend as separate rays from different 
quarters of the world of truth. And there are 
these two lines of evidence for the truth of 
Christ's religion because Christianity presents two 
aspects, — one historical, and the other spiritual, — 



of Christianity. 



5 



a side of narrative which is, as it were, its envelope, 
and of truths which constitute its essence. There 
are the annals which it proposes for our credence 
through the pages of the four Evangelists, such as 
that Jesus was born of certain parents, lived at 
a certain epoch, wrought miracles, was crucified, 
rose from the tomb, and ascended into heaven. 
This is the historical framework of Christianity, 
and the way to determine the validity of it is by 
the thorough scrutiny of the understanding of the 
historical proofs for the authenticity and veracity 
of the records. A person who has examined those 
proofs, and finds them sufficient to convince his 
mind, — as they have convinced the greatest minds, 
— is a believer in the facts of Christian history. 
And then there are the great spiritual principles 
of the Gospel, — its laws of moral life, its revela- 
tions concerning God and duty and destiny, the 
means it offers for the redemption and education 
of the soul, — a person who has in some measure 
felt the power of those principles, and experienced 
the peace and joy, the thrilling sense of spiritual 
health, which are induced by living in harmony 
with the requirements of Christianity, is a believer 
in the essence or vital truths of the Gospel. And 
no other evidence can be substituted for this in- 
ward, experimental proof, for no other evidence 
but that is natural or possible in relation to that 
branch. Historical evidence is requisite to settle 
historical questions, and spiritual evidence is ne- 
cessary to settle spiritual questions. We believe 



6 The Experimental Evidence 



in the biographies of Jesus because the testimony 
of the first and second centuries is strongly in 
favor of their veracity ; but we cannot know 
whether the religion of Jesus is competent to 
satisfy and educate the soul until we see what it 
actually does for men, and feel its power in our 
own breasts. 

The question is earnestly debated now which of 
these two lines of evidence for Christianity is the 
more powerful and satisfactory. The proper an- 
swer, of course, should be that both are essential, 
for each line supports a peculiar department of 
the Gospel. If we believe that it will always be, 
as it surely must be, of importance to the world to 
know that Christ lived, and that the miracles were 
wrought, and that he was crucified and rose, then 
the historical proofs of the Evangelists' account 
will always be needed ; and if faith in the history 
of Christ shall ever die out from the heart of so- 
ciety, I believe that his religion would lose its hold 
upon the world. But as an evidence of the essen- 
tial truth of the religion of the New Testament, 
the practical evidence must always be the stronger. 
Its force increases with every century; the success 
of every new missionary in a heathen land adds 
to it; the experience of each converted man makes 
it more intense ; and with the mass of Christians 
it is now the great pillar of faith in the Gospel. 
And the progress of time will make it still more 
emphatically the bulwark of Christianity. Not 
that men will ever grow indifferent to the histor- 



of Christianity. 



7 



ical facts of the Gospel, — that Jesus lived and 
was the divinely commissioned Teacher, — but 
that they will reason to the fact of his actual ex- 
istence and divinity from the practical evidence 
which the soul furnishes for his religion. The 
argument against scepticism with the great body 
of believers will be the argument of the unlet- 
tered Jew, "Why, herein is a marvellous thing." 
Critics may say it is illogical to reason so, still 
that is the way men do reason and will reason. 
Men are very apt to reason, often to some pur- 
pose too, in ways not recognized in books of logic. 
And perhaps, if we look closely enough, we shall 
see a beautiful proof of the Divine forethought 
for the Gospel, that, as we float away from the 
early ages, and the light of their testimony grows 
fainter in the distance, new proofs shall arise and 
command attention, from the influence of Chris- 
tianity age after age upon society and the soul, — 
proofs that not only hold the faith of men to its 
essential principle, but also sustain their confi- 
dence in its historic facts. 

But to return to the topic which is the especial 
theme of this discourse. The ordinary scepticism 
of men, we repeat, does not affect the core of the 
religion of Jesus. It merely plays around the his- 
tory of it, and although even there it is weak, yet 
it is worth while to remember that it does not pre- 
tend to do anything more than to throw doubts 
around the record of some facts ; it does not pre- 
tend to invalidate the essential truth of Christ's 



8 The Experimental Evidence 



instructions. Only that kind of scepticism which 
denies that man has a religious nature and is a 
religious being can affect the groundwork of the 
Gospel, and such a scepticism is a disease that 
can hardly be cured by proof. A truly Christian 
man, although he may never have looked into a 
volume of the evidence for the genuineness of the 
Christian records, feels a testimony for the Chris- 
tian religion in his own heart which raises him 
above scepticism about the record. Jesus referred 
to this proof when he said, " If ye do his will ye 
shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." 
" He that believeth hath the witness in himself." 
Perhaps such a man had long been wholly selfish 
and worldly. But by being brought within the 
circle of Christian influences his best faculties 
have been awakened and developed. And now 
he sees life in a different light. The wisdom and 
goodness of God are suggested to him from every 
side of nature ; it is a delight to cherish a sense 
of reliance upon the Deity and to feel at all times 
that God is the Father ; the darkness of selfish- 
ness is exchanged for the deep satisfaction of de- 
votion to duty, the slavery of passion for the peace 
of purity, the misery of fear for the joy of love, 
the fever thirst after worldly goods for the serene 
bliss of faith, and holy longings for the favor of 
God and the perfectness of Christ ; existence is 
recognized as a spiritual privilege, death regarded 
as the door to immortality, and the universe be- 
comes a temple for the worship of the Almighty. 



of Christianity. 



9 



Find a heart in which this conversion of princi- 
ples, feelings, and aims has been experienced, 
and you find a heart that feels an immovable 
conviction of the truth of Christianity. Its peace, 
its joys, its consciousness of spiritual health, its 
insight into a new world of which before it had 
no conception, all bear testimony to the reality 
of Christ's religion. What if some man tells him 
that the historical proof is not entirely perfect and 
convincing. The principles of Christianity are his 
sustenance; he has found the Gospel to be spiritual 
bread; he can no longer live without it; and, know- 
ing that it nourishes his soul, and is indispensable 
to his peace, he does not care to dispute about the 
way in which that bread was prepared, and the 
method of its first introduction to the world, He 
is sure that the soul needs it, and, being sure of 
that, he cannot believe that it came into the world 
by accident or by deception. And therefore his 
last answer to scepticism about Jesus is the an- 
swer of the text, "Why, herein is a marvellous 
thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and 
yet he hath opened mine eyes." 

The great question which should determine the 
essential truth of any religion is the practical one, 
— What can it do for man ? Does it provide for 
his weakness? does it meet his needs? does it edu- 
cate and satisfy his spiritual nature ? If it does all 
these perfectly, it must have been made for man, 
and it must be true, unless God is a deceiver, and 
the soul itself an organized cheat. 



io The Experimental Evidence 

And the most searching question that can be 
put to a candid and intelligent doubter of revela- 
tion is this : Do you not believe that a man is 
made better by becoming a Christian, — a sincere, 
enlightened, whole-hearted Christian ? Compare 
such a one with a coarse, sensual, worldly man, or 
with a refined and polished selfish person ; do 
you not believe that man is a purer, nobler, more 
exalted being, if his moral sensibilities are awak- 
ened, if he is always loyal to right, if he is honor- 
able, kind, benevolent, disinterested, if he reveres 
God and loves his fellows and lives for immor- 
tality ? Let the question be put to all who hesi- 
tate respecting the truth of Christianity : Do you 
not believe that the world would be benefited 
beyond conception if all men should to-day be- 
come perfect Christians ? Would you not prefer 
to live in the society of such men ? Would you 
not prefer that your child should grow up under 
such influences and become such a character, 
that your friends and kindred should become so ? 
nay, have you any objection to being such a char- 
acter yourself? 

What then will you say when a character which 
you admire, — when a score of such persons tell 
you: — We owe everything to Christianity; it has 
crushed our selfishness; it has tamed our passions ; 
it has filled our cravings; it has refined our senti- 
ments ; it has uplifted and inspired our hearts ; it 
has taught us how to be children of God, how to 
bear sorrow, how to forgive our foes ; it has un- 



of Christianity. 



1 1 



sealed our spiritual vision and disclosed realities 
in life — the highest realities — to which before 
we were wholly blind. AVhat will you say, my 
friends, to this practical testimony for Christianity? 
Will you venture to contend that, while the results 
of Christ's religion are so glorious, the religion 
itself is a delusion ; that what is best in the moral 
universe is yet untrue ? It is a sad thing to see a 
man sceptical concerning Christianity in the face 
of such evidence, for his scepticism is a confes- 
sion that he does not trust in the reality of his 
purest conceptions of right and holiness, that he 
believes the good in God's dominion to be a lie. 

The most prominent argument for the truth of 
Christianity, the most prominent argument for 
perpetuity, is the practical one, — what it has done, 
what it is doing, for man. There are those who 
sometimes talk as though Christianity was dying 
out, will soon die out, as a force in the world. 
But the simple question with regard to its exist- 
ence as a power in society is this : Shall the 
world go back ? shall civilization lose what it has 
gained ? shall the ideal of character which Chris- 
tianity has painted before the human conscience 
fade or be scouted away ? Does progress lie in 
the direction of barbarism ? Is the world to reach 
to such a state of advancement that selfishness 
will be found better than disinterestedness, and 
love meaner than revenge, and sin more comfort- 
able than redemption from sin, and the idea of a 
parental Providence less elevating than the con- 



12 The Experimental Evidence 

ception of a stern necessity or senseless chance ? 
Let no Christian be disturbed by the fear that the 
Gospel will perish until he has concluded that 
good is ephemeral and doomed to die. " Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not 
pass away." Find anything better than the relig- 
ion of Christ, a system better adapted to human 
wants, a system which contains truths and laws to 
which the spiritual instincts of the purest minds 
are more readily attracted, — in a word, a system 
that can educate character to a higher type than 
that of the Gospel, — and though it come from a 
wild negro tribe in Africa, though it be found 
scratched on bark among the savages of Pata- 
gonia, we ought to take it, take it as a divine 
revelation, and let Christianity pass into the back- 
ground as a religion of the past. If the Mormons 
can point to it, I will gladly be a Mormon • if the 
Turk can show it, I will be a Mohammedan ; if 
the Brahmins can produce it, I will exchange the 
New Testament for the Vedas. No historical 
evidence can stand before the disproof of a higher 
spiritual thought. The discovery of such a sys- 
tem would demonstrate the fact that Christ, like 
Moses, is not the religious teacher for eternity. 
Any man is justified in abandoning Christianity 
when he has found something purer and higher, 
and not till then. The Church has the right to 
hold every sceptic to this problem : Produce your 
truth, your morality, your type of character that 
shall be seen to be higher than Christianity, that 



of Christianity. 



13 



we too may have it, or accept Christianity because 
of your inability to conceive the possibility of 
doing it. 

Let this proof of the Gospel be deeply impressed 
upon our minds : in the world that God governs 
what is highest must be truest ; what will open 
the eyes more powerfully than any other influence, 
what will quicken the conscience more thoroughly 
than anything else, what will best cheer the heart, 
what will most inspire the affections, what will fill 
the soul with holy light, cannot but be as true and 
permanent as the eternal throne. 

And so every benefit which the Gospel has con- 
ferred upon society, every element of life it has 
infused into civilization, every great disinterested 
character it has produced, every noble institution 
it has projected, is an evidence of its reality and 
strength. 

In exchange for sages like Socrates it has given 
to humanity sages like St. Bernard ; for teachers 
like Pythagoras, teachers like Oberlin • for heroes 
like Alexander, heroes like Howard ; for the vic- 
tories of Caesar, the victories of Father Mathew; 
for speculators like Plato, missionaries like Paul. 
All that is purest and most refined in our art and 
our eloquence, all that is most cheering and ele- 
vating in our literature, all that is most stable and 
comforting in our philosophy, all that is most 
praiseworthy and beneficial in our society, — the 
church, the school, the ministry for the poor, the 
missionary post, the abolition movement, the tern- 



14 The Experimental Evidence 



perance pledge, the asylum, the hospital, the char- 
itable sewing-circle, the hundred-handed methods 
of modern beneficence, — are blessings we have 
derived from Christianity in exchange for evils that 
once existed in their stead. Humanity, once poor, 
blind, and scorned, has slowly for centuries been 
raising itself from the dust, quickened by the 
words of Christ, and now, as light is breaking 
upon its brain, as new hopes and a new existence 
begin to gleam before it, we hear it uttering its 
sweet and earnest plea against scepticism, " Why, 
herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not 
whence this Jesus is, and yet he hath opened 
mine eyes." 

The historical evidence for the Gospel is strong, 
but it is hid in dusty books and ancient parch- 
ments, and besides it is not applicable to the whole 
of Christianity. How much more cheering and 
inspiring is the proof that is based on the essen- 
tial divinity of perfect goodness, on the regenerat- 
ing influence that has been poured into the heart 
of society from the recorded life and character of 
Jesus, or the fact that the most cultivated soul 
bows most reverently to his reported precepts, and 
can catch no glimpse of spiritual truth that is 
higher than his words ! Can it be that such a rec- 
ord is fiction ? that what has been the source of 
all our great and substantial blessings is itself un- 
real, a forgery or a dream ? My friends, even if 
we could be convinced that it is so ; if the four 
biographies of the Saviour should ever be shown 



of Christianity. 



15 



to be four variations of a delightful fable ; if it 
should be proved that the Christ we seem to see 
in the misty distance of centuries, walking among 
the poor, shedding new life even from his gar- 
ment's hem into paralytic souls, speaking of the 
Father's mercy, and fanning the spark of love in 
human hearts, is an optical illusion ; if the story 
of the crucifixion — of the thorn-crown worn so 
patiently, of the dying eyes upturned in trust, and 
the lips parted by a forgiving prayer — be no more 
real than a vision before some ancient poet's eye ; 
— still in the name of goodness and of conscience 
let us cling to it as the best thing and therefore 
the truest which the universe contains, as the ideal 
of human duty, as a myth which must have its 
counterpart of reality in some portion of God's 
realm. If we reject it, and say that it is false and 
useless, let us abandon religion with it, and give 
up our belief in God. For there can be no Athe- 
ism more chilling than that which permits a man 
to say that the good is not the true. 

The splendid and convincing proof of the gos- 
pel is the practical proof, — our need of it and its 
adaptedness to our deepest need, — the testimony 
that comes from the great natures of all sects and 
nations and times, whose hearts it has mellowed 
and whose minds it has blessed, — the testimony 
of martyrs who have died for it as their most pre- 
cious treasure, the testimony from the breasts 
where it has kindled the flame of prayer, from the 
affections it has supported in times of sorrow, from 



1 6 Evidence of Christianity. 



the graves which faith has covered with roses and 
symbolical evergreen. No soul that has ever been 
uplifted by its spirit has doubted of its truth. 
What, then, is the extent of our belief in Chris- 
tianity? This question is equivalent to the in- 
quiry, How deeply are our hearts influenced by 
the spirit of the Gospel? If we have its life 
within us we shall feel conscious of its truth, and 
just in proportion to our inspiration of its life will 
be the depth of our faith. . Faith in Christ, — how 
much meaning is hidden in that phrase ! It im- 
plies a heart baptized in the spirit of the Gospel, 
a will faithful to its laws, a soul filled with the 
peace of fellowship with the Redeemer. Every 
disinterested act we do from the impulse of its 
law, every prayer we offer to the Father it reveals, 
every pure emotion we cherish from love of its 
great Teacher, will strengthen our conviction of its 
reality and worth. Without the spirit of it within, 
the greatest among us are blind. Happy is each 
one of us who can offer this proof of Christ's di- 
vinity, — " He hath opened mine eyes." 



Cries from the Depths. 



17 



II. 

CRIES FROM THE DEPTHS. 

" Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord" — Psalm 
cxxx. 1. 

" Hear my cry, O God ; attend unto my prayer. From the end 
of ths earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: 
lead me to the rock that is higher than I." — Psalm lxi. 1, 2. 

THE wonderful psalm, of which the text is 
the keynote, utters the great yearning of 
human nature, and attests its need of an infi- 
nite helper and an infinite joy. The religious 
sentiment in our bosoms manifests itself, in its 
power, either as a deep and piercing cry, or as a 
jubilant experience of satisfaction, peace, and bliss. 
When there is a profound sense of God in the 
soul and a consciousness of filial harmony with 
him, the whole being has a sense of rest and of 
serene joy, which can be expressed only in those 
rich words of Scripture, — " the peace that pass- 
eth understanding." And any one who has felt 
this experience needs no other assurance, for there 
can be none higher, of the reality of religious 
truth. 

But every heart that has any strong wrestle with 
life, and that does not know these profound sat- 

B 



1 8 Cries from the Depths. 

isfactions of faith, is conscious, through its long- 
ings, of the reality of religion. Superficial things 
answer to and appease the superficial sensibili- 
ties ; but when the deeps of the nature are stirred, 
the cry of the soul is religious, it turns toward 
God and craves his light and benediction. 

Whenever any of the deeper emotions are 
aroused, there is a demand for God, a reaching 
out towards the Infinite ; and no satisfaction is felt 
until he is found, and our nature reposes upon him. 
This is true of the intellect. In our ordinary states 
of feeling we content ourselves with the formula 
that there must be a divine Creator of this world, 
and that atheism is impossible. Perhaps we think 
that the whole problem of nature, as related to 
the reason of man, is satisfied by this cool confes- 
sion that the world, so full of witnesses of design, 
must have had a designer. But when the human 
intellect once thoroughly appreciates the problem 
of this universe, once feels its vastness, once gets 
a focal impression of the splendor of it in the 
converging light gleaming from suns and galaxies, 
and deep beyond deep of systems, and nebulous 
firmaments spotting the far recesses of immensity 
with their awful haze, — when once it realizes the 
mystery of all this magnificence that illumines the 
boundless breadth and height of space, — yes, 
when once it comprehends the order of it, so in- 
tricate and silent and steady, the sweep of myri- 
ads of planets around countless suns that whirl 
and blaze and fly, each with its vast family of 



Cries from the Depths. 



19 



orbs, in obedience to some central force, while 
they seem to us fixed continually in the arching 
cope of azure, — is there not a cry of the mind for 
the revelation and presence of a being who em- 
bosoms all this stupendous pageantry of matter, for 
the assurance of a love and wisdom which is the 
substance of all this scenic glory, and with which 
the mind that studies it is more nearly kindred 
than all the marshalled pomp of constellations ? 

As soon as the human intellect appreciates the 
universe in which it stands, what inexpressible 
need it feels of something more than a mathemat- 
ical assent to the proposition that nature must 
once have had a Creator ! how it needs the con- 
sciousness of a present pervading Spirit looking 
out upon it through this framework of matter, and 
warming the whole scene with the expression of 
providence, — with benignity ! Nothing can be so 
awful as the state of a great mind standing face 
to face with modern astronomy, and not feeling 
the assurance of an infinite God, whose spirit is 
nearer to its reason than the marvels of space are 
to its imagination. For such a mind is enslaved 
to matter. It must feel itself crushed into insig- 
nificance by the vastness and weight of the phys- 
ical glory it contemplates. 

If we have not felt the cry of the mind for God, 
it is because its deeps have never been stirred by 
the tremendous problem of nature ; it is because 
we have been content to look at the outside of 
things, and to live by superficial opinions and hab- 



20 



Cries from the Depths. 



its of thought. If we could for one hour compre- 
hend what a world we stand in, what skies over- 
arch us, what mysteries belt us, what an order 
enfolds us, what majestic laws secure and confine 
our freedom and our power, we could not exist 
another day, until we had ennobled and calmed the 
mind by a reliance on the Infinite Wisdom, and 
our psalm would be, " Out of the depths of this 
world mystery have I cried unto thee, O Lord." 

The intellect, as related to the human world, 
utters virtually the same cry towards God when it 
once sounds the questions of moral order. If a 
man can look at the outward world, and gaze into 
its sheer deeps of mystery, and up through the 
starry strata of its splendors, without feeling im- 
pelled by a central necessity of thought to rest on 
the knowledge of an Infinite Prescience and Prov- 
idence, how, at any rate, will it be possible for 
him to study the records of the human race, or to 
conceive the great burdens and hopes and needs 
and woes of the general human heart at this hour, 
without a hunger and thirst of soul for a revela- 
tion to it of a divine plan which the partial dis- 
cords in the centuries will not paralyze, of a 
justice that works from the centre of the moral 
universe, of a pity whose sweet light is never with- 
drawn from this bitter sea of tears ? Keeping out 
of view our need of God, as the fountain of 
personal grace and source of spiritual life for the 
private heart, how is it possible for a human mind 
to live away from him, in darkness as to him, 



Cries from the Depths. 



21 



when it sees so much oppression, such insolent 
wrong, such haughty brutality, such proud and 
sullen selfishness, intrenched in the moral world, 
and opposing its passion and its power to the 
march of goodness and the voice of truth ? If any 
one of us here could survey for an hour the real 
state of things on this earth now, — could see the 
plans which consecrated men have drawn for the 
broad welfare of the race, and how they are baf- 
fled ; could see the injustice and vice and cruelty 
that heave their billows against the best intents of 
patriots and Christians, and could have one intense 
conception of the misery which innocent souls are 
enduring, through the dominion of evil, he would 
startle the heavens with the prayer of agony, 
"Where art thou, O God, in whose hands the 
thunders sleep, and whose justice should be the 
basis of this world ? " There would be no peace 
for us till we had some vision of the Infinite, and 
felt that he sees all this, and understands its pur- 
pose, and wields a law that will pierce to the 
marrow of all guilt, and reserves a love that will 
bless all these clown-trodden ones with infinite 
joy. 

Only let the soul believe that the heavens are 
not passionless, that God has a plan for humanity, 
of which the few centuries of history thus far 
show only the half-chaotic heavings, and it can 
work in peace and study in peace. It has the 
great support, then, of a faith that there is a Being 
who sees deeper, wider, farther, than the wisest 



22 



Cries from the Depths. 



mortal eye, and that there is a heart rilled with an 
ocean of goodness that will yet immerse humanity. 
O, the glory of our Christian faith, which provides, 
by just such a revelation as this, for the mind's 
importunate cry, that fills the whole heavens and 
all eternity with light when the earth seems so 
gloomy, and that says to us, " Take courage, be 
reverent, and hide a sweet hope for man in your 
heart ; for your sense of justice is only the feeblest 
ray of the Infinite equity; and your love, that is 
so distressed by these sorrows of the race, is given 
to you only that you may lose yourself in a feeling 
of an unspeakable mercy ; and the feeble tri- 
umphs which right and goodness .have attained 
thus far in history are only the forecast rays of a 
glory yet to break over all mankind." O that we 
might go down into the deeps and wrestle with 
this great mystery of human life, and the needs 
of humanity, in order that our moral deadness 
might be broken, in order that through the cry 
which would be forced from us for God, we might 
have the glory of his presence break upon us, and 
feel the manly, abounding joy of a belief that 
evil is not the Strongest force in nature, that he 
cares for us, that he works for us, that we are 
nothing, and that we live in him. 

Yet it is more important for us to follow the 
more personal leadings of the subject. When we 
feel that we are in the deeps of sin, when we are 
conscious of its burdens and its spiritual misery, 
what is the experience of the soul ? Is it not a 



Cries from the Depths. 



23 



cry, a cry for help, — a cry, sometimes, almost of 
despair, a cry towards the Infinite ? 

The great fact of this universe is the Person- 
ality of God. We understand its beauties and 
harmonies only when we regard them, and delight 
in them, as the outgush of a conscious and infinite 
Person, — not a set of laws, but a supreme and 
pervading intelligence. We are safe against scep- 
ticism, from the moral perplexities of the world, 
when we regard it as ruled by a wisdom and a 
care that flow from a conscious and ineffable 
equity. And so, brethren, the great spiritual call 
and privilege of our life is to be in harmony with 
this holy personality, whose highest attribute is 
infinite love. Who can utter or fathom the evil 
of sinfulness when we see what its curse is, — 
nothing less than a falling away from unity or fel- 
lowship with God ; not the breaking of a law alone, 
but unspeakable distance from the presence and 
strength of the Lawgiver ; not a misuse of good- 
ness merely, but a turning away from the light and 
benediction of him who is better than his good- 
ness, whose presence, whose face, whose approval, 
are worth more than all he can give us beside ? 

This is the misery and awfulness of a state of 
sin, that it sinks the soul into the depths, so that 
while it has relations with persons on this earth, 
it loses almost the sense of kindred with the ho- 
liest person, and all feeling of dependence upon 
him and of consecration to him. Whether we 
know it or not, this is the terrible judgment upon 



24 Cries from the Depths. 



chronic evil, deep-rooted irreligiousness of heart. 
We often think that the unrest, the pain, the inde- 
finable conscious misery, of sin is the saddest 
doom it brings. But no ; these are signs of lurk- 
ing health. Contentment away from God, satis- 
faction in the darkness of the abyss where no light 
from his countenance penetrates, the rupture of 
the ties between our soul and the Infinite soul, — 
this is the dreadfulness of a sin-loving heart. 

When a man defrauds you in weight, he sins 
against you, not against the scales, which are only 
the instrument of determining true and false 
weight. When men sin it is against God, and 
not against his law, which is but the indicator of 
right and wrong. You care little for sins against 
God's law. It has no blood in its veins, no sensi- 
bility. Now, every sin that you commit is per- 
sonal to God, and not merely an infraction of his 
law. It is casting javelins and arrows of base 
desire into his loving bosom. I think no truth 
can be discovered which would be so powerful 
upon the moral sense of men as that which should 
disclose to them that sinning is always a personal 
offence against a personal God. Law without is 
only an echo of God's heart-beat within. Con- 
scious wretchedness is the soul's dim perception 
of its loneliness and darkness, the first tones, per- 
haps, of the great cry that will break from it when 
it comes to a clear vision of the depths in which 
it is sinking. 

Can we not, almost all of us, respond by our con- 



Cries from the Depths. 



25 



sciousness to this statement, that irreligious habits 
and evil passions start, in some moment of sudden 
and clear vision, the cry for Infinite help ? Do not 
seasons visit us, when we see that, in spite of our 
earthly fortune and gilded circumstances, we are 
spiritually sunk in an abyss, that there is light 
above us, far off above us, — a sweet bright sky, 
a warm serene air, — and that, if our hearts were 
only right with God, if we could stretch out and 
take his hand and feel in friendship with him, 
we should be lifted into that spiritual day? 

We often hear of a difference between an evan- 
gelical religion and one that cannot claim that 
title, — of evangelical preaching as something dif- 
ferent from moral appeal and the interpretation 
of moral truth. Brethren, there is an evangelical 
preaching related directly and principally to our 
sense of sin and our slavery to it. And I beg 
you to see that the distinction of it is, not that it 
denounces doom against the offender, but that it 
comes to him with the accents of pity and the 
tone of cheer. The true evangel, the glorious 
gospel to us, is, that we have only to cry from 
our depths, earnestly and penitently, to God, and 
his grace will visit us ; we shall get lifted up into 
sunshine. It is not his justice that prevents his 
mercy from reaching us ; it is our contentment in 
darkness, our love of what is bad, or our nerve- 
less timidity to believe in his grace and his 
eagerness to stretch towards us the everlasting 
arm. It is not his vindictiveness that threatens 
2 



26 



Cries from the Depths. 



us with hell • it is our earthliness that sinks us 
there, — into the deeps where we do not know 
him, or care to worship or love him ; and if we 
are contented there, that is our lowest hell. God's 
positive relations towards us are those of compas- 
sion, — an infinite desire to redeem us and lift us 
up. It was the glory of the mission of Christ to 
tell us this, — to show us that, when we feel bound 
hand and foot in evil habits, we need not remain 
crushed in the folds of omnipotent law, but that 
a cry will bring God to us ; that by the tears of 
repentance and the opening of the heart the 
breath of grace will lighten our burden, so that 
we can stand at once humble, joyful, and forgiven 
in the presence of the Father. Is it not a Gos- 
pel, is it not glad tidings, that tells us this, — a 
Gospel bursting with unspeakable hallelujahs ? 
How many of us know anything of it by experi- 
ence? There is no doubt that most of us are "in 
the depths." Few of us remain so contented in 
the bondage of the world that we do not feel the 
wrestle within the soul, that we do not feel the 
inmost misery of our unreconciliation. But do 
we cry towards the Highest One then ? Do we 
ask for help, for light, for pardon ? That is the 
crisis-season of the spirit ; that is what all our 
experience is provided for ; that is why the bur- 
den is rolled upon us so heavily, — the whole bur- 
den of this universe, — that we shall make simply 
that ejaculation, that we shall send up into the 
heavens that prayer, which the whole chorus of 



Cries from the Depths. 



27 



praises in the sky could not keep from the Infi- 
nite ear, — " O God, help me in the depths \ " 
Then is the new birth in the soul; then piety leaps 
full-formed from the groaning heart; then mists 
roll away from the world ; the weights drop from 
our feet ; our cry is answered ; we are in sunshine, 
we are free ! This is the meaning of that great 
passage of the Apostle, — O that more of us could 
know its truth by experience ! — "Wretched man 
that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death ? I thank God through Jesus Christ 
our Lord." 

It seems hardly proper to turn from that which 
is the most trying and searching experience of the 
bosom, to a less solemn sphere of the subject ; 
yet we shall be in harmony with the primary sug- 
gestions of the Psalm which has led us to these 
thoughts, if we speak of the soul's cry out of the 
deeps of sorrow and the burden of the affections. 
How naturally these two thoughts come together, 
human sorrow and God ! We cannot divorce 
them. What a shock it gives the purest sensi- 
bilities to think of anything temporal as the offset 
or compensation of a severe bereavement of the 
heart ! What blasphemy to speak of or imagine 
such sorrow compensated by wealth, — to think of 
station as an offset to it, or earthly pleasures as a 
solace for it, or anything which the gospel of sense 
or pride could hold up before the mind ! The 
depth of sorrow is that of loneliness, and loneli- 
ness of soul disposes us to turn for that society 



28 



Cries from tJie Depths. 



which alone prevents us from being isolated and 
imprisoned in the sense of loss. 

If we sink a deep and narrow shaft into the 
earth, and go down to the bottom of it in the day- 
time, and turn our eyes upward, we see the stars. 
The great heights of space which the sunlight 
hides are revealed, — not utterly black, but em- 
blazoned with a few of the jewels which speak of 
the Creative Presence and Providence in far-off 
inconceivable distances of the Universe. So the 
loneliness of the spirit banishes the visions of the 
earth, causes the deceptive sunlight to part its 
veil, and brings us into mystic correspondence 
with the Infinite Presence, the deeper lights of 
his providence. Heaven then begins to shine 
upon us like a star, far off, feeble in its light, 
perhaps, but still it is all we can see and all that 
we care to see. In its bereavement, sunk in shafts 
of sorrow, the heart naturally turns to God, and 
the lips spontaneously speak, even though the 
phrases be formal and customary, of his purposes 
and his power. 

The depths of loneliness ! If all other beings 
should be stricken from existence, and one of us 
should be left sole proprietor of this world, — 
alone in space, alone in the sunlight, alone be- 
neath the stars, — if our reason did not reel in 
such awful solitude, could we think of anything 
else but the religious mystery of nature and of 
human life ? Could we think of anything else 
than where those myriads have gone, that so lately 



Cries from the Depths. 



29 



peopled the world, and of what Providence had in 
store for the last conscious being that stood be- 
neath his heaven ? Now by this present plan of 
existence through which we are all of us, at times, 
suddenly wrapt in the veil of affliction, and virtu- 
ally so far removed from the world that its hum 
is drowned, and its interests drop off from us, and 
we stand alone by a bedside from which our 
dearest treasure is just flitting away, or by a new- 
made grave that holds a beloved and reverend form, 
what is Providence doing for us but practically 
putting us in complete solitude, so that our world- 
liness may be broken, so that we may utter the 
cry of the lonely, and not only see that we need 
his presence, but pray for it, and find it, and 
rejoice. 

The power of religion is manifest when God 
comes to us by a cleansing grace in answer to the 
cry from the deep of sin ; but the glory of relig- 
ion is revealed in the truths and the comforts 
that answer the supplications which burst from 
the deeps of grief. For it is only then that the 
eternal world gleams with its mystic beauty, shed- 
ding its dim, strange light upon our tears. Then 
the ear is open and hungry for the whispers of 
the Gospel, — that there is a Providence which 
counts our hairs, and suffers not a single child of 
his to drop into the abyss of night. Then the 
heart is prepared for the wondrous assurance that 
love is not limited to this world, but continues its 
plans of education into eternity, and maintains 



30 



Cries from the Depths. 



there a discipline designed for good, to end in 
celestial bliss. 

O, if all the loneliness of sorrow fulfilled its 
purpose, how much more glorious would life be! 
If the death of each of those we love forced from 
us an intenser cry towards the Infinite, opened to 
us the mystery of life which only the startled heart 
can worthily feel, and disclosed the far-reaching 
vista of the future world ! What a life would this 
be if we had such a sense of the nearness of God 
and the reality of the world to come and the pa- 
rental discipline of heaven as Christianity would 
inspire, and as the soul's agony in bereavement 
and wrestle with the problem of death demand ! 
If we were all faithful to that darkness which so 
dwarfs the ordinary interests of this world, afflic- 
tion would be the greatest blessing. In exchange 
for one friend on earth we should get the vision 
of eternity, the splendor of divine light, a hope 
sanctified by tears, the assurance of the Infinite 
Presence. 

We lose immensely by our unfaithfulness to 
the privilege of sorrow. Cry from its depths for 
the Lord, and his comfort will be ready. The 
misery of our griefs is that we make no cry. We 
feel the pain of a ruptured fellowship ; we sit in 
darkness, missing the precious presence borne 
away ; we struggle with our anguish, but we keep 
our eyes to the earth. We think of God, perhaps, 
but we do not concentrate all the energies of 
grief in one intense prayer for his help and peace. 



Cries from the Depths. 



3i 



If we did, if we brought the soul into the sincer- 
est religious posture and state, we should know, 
through the answer to that cry, that the beloved 
one was withdrawn to the deeps of a love which 
this world could not reveal ; and if the soul of 
the departed was prepared by consecration, we 
should have such a vision of its blessed work and 
such a joy in the spiritual world, that this world 
would seem glorious only as the vestibule of that ; 
and if the soul had not begun here devotion to 
infinite truth and sanctity, we should have the 
sweet hope in that Providence which fits the dis- 
cipline of eternity to the heart's deepest need. 

Religion is a cry from the depths. The noblest 
natures among men have been religious ones. No 
soul of mighty faculties, of sensibilities strong 
enough to sound the depths, fine enough to feel 
the heights, of this world mystery and grandeur, 
has been an indifferent, irreligious soul. They 
have bowed to the royalty of religious truth, either 
by their joyful possession of it or by their cry for 
it. Only the surface of our nature can nourish an 
atheistic plant ; when its deeps are ploughed, the 
latent seed of faith begins to germinate, and the 
promise of a piety vigorous and sinewy as the 
structure of the oak lifts itself above the soil. 

Religious belief is an assent to some propo- 
sitions about this life and about the soul and 
about the Infinite. Religion itself is a cry from 
the heart's deeps, from the deeps of experience, 
upwards to a living God. It is in mercy that 



32 



Cries from the Depths. 



God stirs those deeps of feeling, sinks us in those 
depths of discipline, so that our belief may be- 
come experience, so that our words of opinion 
may become a piercing prayer. There is none 
of us for whom the Father hath not thus, in some 
way, opened these shafts of gloom and mystery. 
How many of us are able to say from the expe- 
rience of the intellect, the conscience, or the 
heart, "I am not alone, because the Father is 
with me." 

1855. 



The Stipremacy of J^esus. 



33 



III. 



THE SUPKEMACY OF JESUS, 



" Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him 
a name which is above every name : that at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, 
and things under the earth." — Philippians xi. 9, 10. 



'HIS is the Christmas day. Standing as a 



X memorial of Christ's birth, as well as of 
his resurrection, it is a double Sabbath ; and it 
calls upon us to consider some theme that will 
naturally unfold to us the supremacy of Jesus, 
which makes Christmas the sacred festival day in 
the world's calendar. 

The words we have quoted from the Apostle 
Paul set forth the supremacy of Christ with an 
eloquence more ample and a rhythm more joyous 
than any other passage in the Bible, and so, 
of course, than any other passage in literature. 
" God hath given him a name which is above 
every name." Stand back in history near the sta- 
ble of that humble inn in Bethlehem, and how 
strangely those words sound when applied to that 
infant whose cradle is the manger of oxen, whose 
first sleep is upon some common straw ! It is 




34 The Supremacy of Jesus. 



true, some wise men from the East, urged by an 
inexplicable impulse, are entering the courtyard 
of the inn to bear some presents to a mysterious 
prince whose nativity, they believed, is to fall on 
that hour, and whose birthplace is to be in Beth- 
lehem. But what can their strange respect, of- 
fered in frankincense and myrrh beneath that shed, 
avail to lift that child of a carpenter above all 
earthly potentates? Is it not a mockery rather 
than a prophecy, this kneeling of dark-skinned 
astrologers and sages among Jewish peasants be- 
fore this untitled babe ; a scoff at his impotence 
rather than an augury of his greatness ? In pres- 
ence of the power, splendor, and prejudices of 
Jerusalem, what can this child do, with only a few 
fishermen to help him, towards lifting his name 
above Moses and Abraham, David and Isaiah ? 

And when Paul used these jubilant sentences, 
sixty years after that birth in Bethlehem, how must 
they have sounded to the Caesar in Rome, whose 
name was truly above every name, within whose 
empire the Christians could hardly be reckoned 
as a handful, and into whose palace even an out- 
line of the biography of Christ had never strayed. 
Yet those Oriental sages died, and we know not 
their names ; the place where the stable stood 
cannot be detected now ; every building of Jeru- 
salem, even the Temple that flashed so vividly in 
the morning light, has been ploughed into the 
earth. Rome and its power, the Caesars and their 
pomp, and the millions that feared them, have 



The Supremacy of Jesus. 35 



passed away like a dream, while history has been 
helping us to interpret the great sentence of the 
Apostle concerning Jesus, that " God hath given 
him a name which is above every name," which 
must rise still higher, and be supreme in human 
veneration and love. 

But it is not our business this morning to dwell 
so much upon the fact of Christ's supremacy, as 
to look into the reasons for it. Why has Provi- 
dence thus exalted him so highly ? It is not, we 
may be sure, by any arbitrary methods, but be- 
cause of an essential supremacy in the nature, the 
spirit, and the work of Jesus. He could not be 
lifted to the highest place if he were hot really 
the highest. 

First, then, we say that Christ is supreme ac- 
cording to the true scale of honors, because his 
office is the highest one that has ever been intrust- 
ed to any being on the earth. The various sects 
differ very widely as to the details of the work for 
which Jesus was commissioned ; but they all agree 
in this, that he came to do what men most needed 
to have done for them, as spiritual and immortal 
beings. God appoints different offices for his 
great servants in society. One he makes to be a 
lawgiver, another to be a poet, another a great 
statesman, another a discoverer of the true order 
of the heavens, another an organizing philanthro- 
pist, another a mechanical inventor. Outside the 
circle of political honors and dignities which hu- 
man votes determine, there are stations and hon- 



36 The Supremacy of ycsus. 



ors arranged directly by the hand of God, and 
those who are eminent in these ranks cannot be 
robbed of their true dignity, but keep it for all 
time. Thus a monarch who simply holds his 
place by power, and for his own aggrandizement 
and pleasure, is forgotten soon after his successor 
mounts the throne ; but if he relates himself in 
any way to the deeper nature of his subjects, by 
endeavoring to benefit them, by striving to organ- 
ize in his realm some great principles of liberty 
and justice, he becomes a true monarch, his soul 
as well as his body rises to a throne, his people 
recognize his name as something higher than that 
of a mere physical ruler, and a majesty invests it 
after his material power has gone. 

So it is impossible to take away the authority and 
splendor from those men whom God appoints to 
great offices. In all earthly circumstances Queen 
Elizabeth was immensely higher than Shakespeare, 
James the First more mighty than Bacon, Charles 
the Second immeasurably above Milton, the Ro- 
man pope incalculably more eminent than Coper- 
nicus ; but in all the former cases the greatness 
was rather of circumstances, and so the most 
of it passed away when death changed those 
circumstances. In the latter cases the great- 
ness was that of providential office : these men 
were bearers of new truth, they stood in direct 
connection with the intellectual substance and the 
mental needs of society ; and so death dispels 
all the accidental circumstances which may have 



The Supremacy of Jesus. 



37 



shadowed them, and in history they rise as the 
mental kings, — emperors of genius, with names 
higher than monarchs, — the benefactors of the 
immortal mind of man. Just according to their 
ranks of service, the eminence of their providen- 
tial office, do names mount before the world's 
respect and veneration. 

Now, brethren, it is precisely the same law, 
reaching its climax of potency, that accounts for 
the relations between that humble birth at Beth- 
lehem and the grand prophecy of St. Paul. The 
highest office which God appoints to any being 
on the earth is to interpret the spiritual relations 
of our life. He is most highly endowed who has 
the vision that pierces deepest into moral truth, 
sees more of the majesty of right, unfolds more of 
the spirit of love, and interprets God so that we 
feel his life nearer to ours and see everything in 
the light of his providence. When such insight, 
such truth, is proclaimed to us, our inmost and 
eternal natures are touched, and we acknowledge 
a power nearest akin to God's, and before which 
all civil majesties are of no account. This is the 
relation in which Christ stands to the whole race. 
He walked in Galilee with fishermen, but he 
talked to the universal soul. He sat on the hill- 
side near Capernaum, but his sermon was preached 
to all future generations of men. He conversed 
with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, but he 
whispered there the truths of God's spirituality 
and of inward worship into the ear of the race. 



38 



The S?ifiremacy of yesns. 



He narrated a story to a Jewish lawyer, but it 
was the world that hearkened and treasured the 
picture of the good Samaritan as the ideal of 
duty. He partook of a simple meal with twelve 
humble friends ■ and the penitent, the bowed, the 
weary, the bereaved, of all nations and outstretch- 
ing centuries were dimly ranged around that 
board. His office was the highest to scatter 
superstitions that hung between the heavens and 
human eyes, to quicken the religious sentiment 
of the world by his breath, to bring the races to- 
gether in a common worship of the Father, and to 
publish such a mercy hidden in the skies, that 
penitence should be quickened in the hearts of 
men, and a filial life take the place of selfishness 
and sin. What now was the position of a Herod 
and a Nero in the world, that they deserved to 
live, or could live, before the rising power of a 
soul with such an office ? What could they do 
but die in their sensualism, earth-born creatures, 
with power related only to human muscles and 
fear, — what could they do but have their names 
pushed out into darkness by the spreading power 
of this new Spirit, who spoke to the eternal ele- 
ment in humanity? There is nothing strange 
about this culmination of Christ in the meridian 
of history. He has risen to the first place be- 
cause he is the first in office ; and God has ex- 
alted him because, by every law of truth, he 
belongs in the zenith of his vast providence. 
Again, the work which Jesus has done is a 



The Supremacy of yestis. 



39 



work of such vast proportions that his name is 
naturally lifted by it to the highest place. Men 
revere their practical benefactors. The mind that 
originates and carries a new law which stands 
between the people and oppression, or that or- 
ganizes a new institution of benevolence, or that 
gives an impulse to a new movement for popular 
rights, is the largest practical benefactor of men, 
and is recognized as such. 

In this light how does the work of Christ 
appear ? Putting ourselves back in his position, 
and looking down through history, what do we 
see rising up over this earth, to attest the practical 
power of his life ? Behind him is the various 
pomp of heathenism, — the luxury of Babylon, the 
splendor of Nineveh, the grotesque greatness of 
Egypt, — all set in relief against the little they had 
done for the nobler nature and the dearest inter- 
ests of man. Behind him was the rich culture of 
Greece, whose literature, the resource of the in- 
tellectual, breathed nothing in behalf of the strug- 
gling masses, nothing to waken immortal hopes 
in the ignoble poor, and whose architecture was 
distinguished by no asylum or charity school. 
Around him was the vigorous power of Rome, 
that knew how to organize the state, how to build 
the palace and the forum, the coliseum and the 
theatre, but not how to speak to, or legislate for, 
the finer wants and the eternal structure of hu- 
manity. But before him, called up at the bidding 
of his breath, springing up in the pathway of his 



4-0 TJie Supremacy of Jesus. 



words, which he scatters off into the centuries, 
see what new institutions rise, — homes more 
sacred and refined ; churches whose spires point 
in every land to a common father ; hospitals in 
which obscure sufferers find wise and gentle care ; 
institutions of beneficence that enfold the blind 
and the lame, the impotent intellect and the smit- 
ten frame, hopeless poverty and orphaned minds, 
in the embrace of a charity before unorganized 
on the globe. Laws begin to relax their stern- 
ness, manners to catch a kindlier courtesy, sci- 
ence to glow with richer hues, literature to swell 
with nobler purposes. And see how the evils 
and hardships of the world begin to stand out 
in a new light ! How pain begins to be con- 
quered in a spirit higher and sweeter than the 
Stoic taught ; how unbelief is confronted with 
truth that charms its doubts away ; how sick- 
rooms are visited with tones, sweet as they are 
mystic, " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world"; how graves are illuminated with the 
words he uttered, that seem to have floated up- 
ward and inwoven themselves in the starlight that 
arches over the cemeteries of Christendom, " In 
my Father's house are many mansions"; and how 
bereaved ones hear a call, as from one bearing the 
peace, as well as authority, of the skies, " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest " ! Such, in the light of 
history, are Christ's relations to humanity. Every- 
thing noblest in our institutions, highest in our 



The Supremacy of Jesus. 



4i 



public principles, most just and noble in our law, 
sweetest in private character, most elevating in 
our ideas and hopes, can be seen to radiate and 
diffuse itself over the best portion of the earth, 
from his personality. Strike him out from his 
few months' ministry in Palestine, and all these 
elements and facts which vivify society and enno- 
ble our life disappear, as the rays of light would 
vanish if the sun should be quenched. There is 
nothing so practical as the Christian religion; 
nothing that has done the work in this world, so 
controlled the forms and changed the spirit of 
society, as that being whose humble mission the 
four biographies in the New Testament reveal. 
If we think the influence of Christianity has been 
slight in the world (judging men by its own stand- 
ard, it has been slight enough), compare our 
condition in New England with Rome in the 
time of Nero, and think what humanity would 
have been now, if left solely to the heathen prin- 
ciples that were then striking their canker to the 
heart of the mightiest empire this globe has ever 
borne. All the difference between Rome then 
and New England now, all the difference be- 
tween what humanity would have been in eighteen 
centuries more of such drifts towards corruption, 
and what it is now, and what its hopes are now, 
is to be credited to the work of Jesus, to his 
personal influence upon the world. Wherever a 
church is built to the Universal Father, the hand 
of Christ is laid in consecration upon the altar ; 



42 The Supremacy of Jesus. 

wherever a bloody law is expunged from the stat- 
ute-book of a people, the finger of Jesus has 
passed in mercy across its code ; wherever sounds 
a rebuke of slavery, a condemnation of war, a plea 
for the poor, an appeal for an unselfish cause, — 
in whatever accents, speech, or emphasis we listen 
to the music of the common brotherhood, it is the 
onward, swelling chorus, reverberating through the 
arches and corridors of centuries, to accompany 
and sustain that perfect melody that rose eighteen 
hundred years ago, in Palestine, like incense from 
the heart of Christ. 

Where then is another name that can stand so 
high ? Must it not, of necessity, rise over all 
others, as the world's greatest practical benefac- 
tor, — source of its best institutions, author of its 
noblest liberties, purifier of its homes, quickener 
of its hopes, inspirer of its highest happiness, 
regenerator of its loves ? 

I have taken thus far a more outward and cir- 
cumstantial method than is usual, to show the 
work of Jesus in the world, because too many 
minds fail to see how the practical character of 
Christianity can be proved by items and by his- 
torical methods, just as the value of the Decla- 
ration of Independence and the importance of 
Jefferson's life can be proved by the republican 
structure and vast prosperity of this country now. 
But there is a third point, higher than the other 
two, which proves the supremacy of Jesus, and to 
which we must give the highest place, — the spirit 



The Supremacy of yesns. 43 

he manifested. His office as a teacher was most 
eminent \ his work as practical benefactor has 
been broadest ; but the spirit he exhibited is the 
crowning glory of his mission and the final justifi- 
cation of his supremacy. 

Humanity, brethren, is above nature. A human 
frame is a greater piece of mechanism, a higher 
expression of creative skill, than the solar system. 
More resources of design, more intricate harmo- 
nies are displayed in it, than the orbits and in- 
terplay of the planets disclose. And then the 
soul of man is infinitely above the outward world 
as an expression, or setting forth, of God. And 
so the clearest revelation of what is divine must 
come through humanity. It cannot be written in 
the sky; it cannot be uttered in mysterious ora- 
cles breaking up from the earth or dropping 
through the air ; it cannot be borne on flying 
leaves written with God's finger, or drawn, as the 
first stern code was, upon tables of stone. The 
human soul is God's highest creation and noblest 
organ, and his clearest revelation must be through 
that, and through the noblest part of the human 
soul. Intellect is not our highest endowment. 
Imagination is not our crowning faculty. Every 
form of genius is inferior to conscience, to the 
heart, to faith, sympathy, and love. "Though I 
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
though I have the gift of prophecy and under- 
stand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have 
not charity, I am nothing ; I am .become as 



44 The Supremacy of Jesus. 



sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." If heaven 
is to open to us, it must be through the deep, 
warm, holy sentiments of humanity. 

Here Christ is highest. Thus his name vaults 
over every name. Those qualities that make our 
humanity translucent with beams from the Infi- 
nite, — perfect moral truthfulness, piercing through 
all mists of passion to what is pure, complete con- 
formity of conscience and will, undoubting faith 
in God, unfaltering heroism, prayerful reliance 
upon the Infinite, and love gushing full and stead- 
ily towards men from a hallowed heart, — were not 
these elements of the soul of Jesus? — these his real 
transfiguration as our spiritual eyes behold him, 
in splendor more divine than that which invested 
his form on Mount Tabor, as though his nature 
were woven of the pure light which is the effluence 
of God ? What name offers itself against him in 
challenge of his spiritual supremacy ? In meekness 
and in majesty, in strength and in trust, in service 
and in royalty, in pity and in searching severity, 
in love for man and in clear devotion to his high- 
est good, in relation to all or any of the qualities 
that interpret the compassion, the justice, and the 
holiness of God, or that reveal the spiritual beauty 
and worth of man, what name before Jesus rises 
to any rivalry ? What name since, that is eminent 
among the saints and the illustrious of the world's 
heroes of goodness, does not count it the highest 
glory to be considered his disciple ? His name 
must be highest because the desert, and his inter- 



The Supremacy of yesus. 45 



view with Nicodemus, and his merciful healings, 
and his nights of prayer, and his brotherly com- 
munion with the lowly, and his quickening com- 
passion for the outcast, and his humility at the last 
supper, and his lonely fidelity in Gethsemane, and 
his spiritual royalty before Pilate, and his patience 
in buffetings, and his last petition for murderers on 
the cross, are the points in human history where 
the highest qualities belonging to the Divine ir- 
radiate our nature, — hostility to evil, loyalty to 
goodness, pity for the fallen, and love conquering 
all malice and revenge. His name is the highest 
as the personal utterance of what is highest as 
qualities in the spiritual world and in the nature 
of God. 

How poor, alas, are all such analytic methods 
to set forth the supremacy of Jesus in the world 
of humanity ! It needs such utterance as great 
music gives in that oratorio which interprets the 
world's need of him, his glory, his passion, and his 
victory. The gross darkness that preceded him 
is there fitly suggested to the mind. His name 
— Wonderful, Counsellor, a mighty God, the Prince 
of Peace — is there foretold with a grandeur some- 
what adequate to the mighty fulfilment of those 
words in history. The deep calm from which he 
entered the world, and the sweet melody born 
with him into this stormy life, — yet to subdue 
all raging and discord to the keynote of good- 
will to men, — are typified in the symphony that 
prepares the ear for the angels' song. His earthly 



4 6 



The Supremacy of yesits. 



state — "despised and rejected of men, a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief" — finds some 
sympathetic utterance in those pathetic cadences 
that come as from the genius of music singing 
with streaming tears. The heart's need of his 
peace, based on the inmost fellowship with God, 
is told, as no unsung eloquence can tell it, in that 
appeal, " Come unto him, all ye that labor and he 
will give you rest," which seems to float out from 
some pardoned Magdalen or comforted mother's 
heart at the feet of Jesus, that has felt her sin or 
sorrow melt into mystic quiet at the touch of his 
finger upon the throbbing soul. The jubilant faith, 
" I know that my Redeemer liveth," can have no 
such clothing as the song which sweeps up from 
a basis of sadness to a tone of triumph over the 
grave ; and the prophetic victory of Jesus cannot 
worthily break into speech except through organ 
and orchestra and chorus, that lift up on that bil- 
lowy hallelujah the truth that "he shall reign for- 
ever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords." 
Where is the name that can link itself with that 
music of the Messiah if Christ be forgotten? It 
would be too glorious, too sublime, an anomaly in 
this world, if it were not the Christmas anthem, 
the utterance of the religious needs and glory of 
man, and the clothing in melody and harmony of 
his perfection, whom God hath exalted over all 
the race, " to whom every knee shall bow." 

Ah, yes ! how truly does every knee bow to 
him in the larger and vaguer sense ! His name is 



The Supremacy of yestis. 47 



highest because we worship no other finite name 
with inmost satisfaction. Outwardly we worship 
other things. We strive for money ; we pay re- 
spect to conquerors and statesmen, and men of 
station, and rich men, and selfish men of genius. 
But in our best moods, in our silent hours, when we 
are most truly and deeply men, we adore goodness, 
we enthrone self-sacrifice, we pay our heartiest 
homage to the spirit of love, we worship Jesus 
Christ. 

In the retreats of every heart there is one holi- 
est district, inclosing a chapel wherein the Cruci- 
fied receives a devotion that we accord to no other 
name. And by this secret reverence, this per- 
sonal and unspoken love, we are called upon to 
make that name the highest name in daily prac- 
tice, to walk through our duties, to live in our 
homes, to feel toward God, to go out among the 
thick miseries of the world obedient to our inmost 
loyalty, proclaiming that name as highest in our 
temper and integrity, our piety, our gratitude, our 
denial of passion and selfishness, our scattered 
charities and radiant love. That is the way to 
honor the nativity, that is the way to have a con- 
stant Christmas in the soul. 

Bear with me a moment longer, while I refer to 
the magnificent comprehensiveness of St. Paul's 
closing expression in the text, " that at the name 
of Jesus every knee should bow." This is to 
be the complete proof of his supremacy ; all souls 
will confess it at last. How glorious seems the 



48 The Supremacy of yesiis. 



hope for man, for every man, in the light of that 
cross from which even murderers were forgiven ! 
That Hallelujah Chorus which a human genius 
conceived, is it not to be swept upward yet from a 
choir which excludes no creature born of God's 
spirit for a life of good ? Are the Christmas 
hopes and the Christmas prophecies to be cheated 
of their grandest fulfilment? Is any soul to be 
shut out forever from the adoration of Jesus and 
the love of God ? The old Rabbis had a poetic 
picture of a day yet to come in the eternal courts, 
when the just should praise the Almighty, so 
that 

" Will ever high and higher be borne and swept along 
Heaven's azure vaulted roofs the full concert of song : 
Then will that mighty voice of jubilee be heard, 
Until from end to end the spacious world is stirred." 

Yes, and just as its echo ceases in heaven, their 
fable runs that a strange " Amen " comes faintly 
to the throne as from infinite depths, and Jehovah 
asks from whence it issues. The angels veil their 
faces, and reply that it is from those who knew 
not, while living, the heavenly law. And then 
God 

" Will give the golden key from heaven's crystal floors, 
Which opens with a touch hell's forty thousand doors, 
And Michael, mighty prince, will fly with it amain, 
On mercy's errand swift, and all the angelic train. 
Hell's forty thousand gates will open at his word, 
Its narrow chambers deep with expectation stirred. 
The prisoners he will draw from dungeons where they lay, 
And extricating lift from the deep and miry clay, — 
Will wash and cleanse their wounds where they have plagued be; j n, 
And clothe in garments white and beautiful and clean ; 



The Supremacy of Jesus. 



49 



And taking by the hand will lead them to the gate 
Of Paradise, where they must for a moment wait ; 
Till there with leave brought in, they fall upon their face, 
And worship God, and praise, and magnify his grace ; 
While all that had before their places round the throne 
Will give new thanks for this new mercy he has shown, 
And by new voices swelled, and higher and more strong, 
Ring through the vaults of heaven the full consent of song." 

Such must be the final issue, yet, on some far off 
morning in eternity, of that song which the angels 
rolled over Bethlehem as the keynote of the Gos- 
pel, — " Glory to God." Such must be the ulti- 
mate attestation of Paul's prophecy, "Where- 
fore God hath highly exalted him, and given him 
a name which is above every name : that at the 
name of Jesus every name should bow, of things 
in heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
the earth." 

1853. 



3 



D 



5o 



Christian Thought of 



IV. 



CHRISTIAN THOUGHT OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 

" And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also 
bear the image of the heavenly." — i Corinthians xv. 49. 



HIS verse is a fair sample and illustration 



JL of the allusions in the New Testament to 
the future life. There is no argument in the 
great documents of our religion for an eternal 
existence. The early Christians considered it, 
not as a doctrine, but as a fact. Argument, 
scientific and moral proofs, were not needed 
by them ; for to their faith — yes, with the 
earliest ones, to their vision — the tomb itself had 
spoken, the sepulchre had confessed that it was 
only the gateway to another life. There was an 
Easter in their calendar, the royal day of their 
ecclesiastical year. And by the three great festi- 
vals — Good Friday, when the spirit of Jesus 
sank into the shadow ; the Resurrection Sunday, 
when he re-entered the world through the door of 
Joseph's tomb ; and Ascension day, which saw him 
fade into the sky — the three spheres of existence 
were knit together as parts of one stupendous 
fact, districts of the great territory of life, — this 




the Future Life. 



5i 



earth, and the abyss, and the upper world of light 
and love. 

Especially do the references in the New Testa- 
ment to the future life show that the world to 
come was as real to the earliest believers as the 
present world. How striking those references 
are, — so positive, yet so indefinite, so healthy, so 
free from all fanatical heat and fancy, and yet so 
burdened with the sublimity and mystery that 
belong to the idea of immortality. 

We often say that the revelation of the future 
life is the peculiarity of Christianity. And yet 
how meagre are the contributions of the New 
Testament to our acquaintance with tlie world to 
come ! The whole spirit of those writings is that 
our souls are our true substance, that the mortal 
body is only a film, that this earth is simply the 
stepping-stone to a great existence under other 
conditions and in a spiritual sphere : but they do 
not gratify our curiosity ; they show us nothing 
of the details of that life ; they point to it as 
though a curtain hangs before it, beyond which 
the true life of the soul begins, but through which 
it is not permitted unto any mortal eye to pierce. 
" In my Father's house are many mansions ; I 
go to prepare a place for you." "I will not 
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that 
day when I drink it new with you in my Father's 
kingdom." "For we know that if our earthly 
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have 
a building of God, a house not made with hands, 



52 



Christian Thought of 



eternal in the heavens." " Eye hath not seen, 
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
heart of man the things which God hath prepared 
for them that love Him." "This corruptible 
must put on incorruption." " As we have borne 
the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the 
image of the heavenly." So calm and positive 
are the affirmations of Jesus and the Apostles 
concerning the life to come. They use substan- 
tial language, and vigorous imagery of buildings 
and garments, of wine and society and ineffable 
joy, as though real life is to begin when all that 
we suppose real here is dropped away. 

This is the point to which I would fix your at- 
tention now, — the true Christian habit of thought 
as to the future. How definite should it be ? 
What conditions should it attribute to the future 
world ? What methods of being and occupations 
should enter into our imaginations of it, and our 
anticipations of its experience ? All such ques- 
tions as these, you may say, belong to the region 
of speculation, mere speculation, and can do no 
possible good in being seriously treated. But I 
say no. Our views of the future life are thin and 
unpractical and impotent because we do keep off 
from all speculation about it. How poor, almost 
barren, has the Christian imagination been in 
its conceptions, I will not say of the details, but 
of the principles and the objects of that future 
world ! The imagery of the judgment-seat of 
Christ, which the New Testament in one or two 



the Future Life. 



53 



instances suggests, has been expanded and verified 
by the rhetoric and poetry of the Church, so that 
it has filled up all the space into which the eye of 
the spirit can pierce beyond the grave, so that a 
solemn gloom rests over the world to come. Or 
when the timid fancy has ventured at all into pic- 
tures or conjectures of the occupations of that 
sphere, it has not strayed beyond the hints of the 
Apocalypse, of the songs of the hundred and 
forty-four thousand elders, and the harps and the 
golden phials full of odors, and the white robes, 
and the palms in their hands. The conception 
of heaven as an immeasurable singing-school, 
and its business a never-ending and monotonous 
chant directly in the blaze of God's holiness, has 
little to attract the hearty thought of strong 
men towards it ; and I seriously believe that it is 
the poverty of imagination in the Church as to 
the conditions, the duties, and the joys of the 
future world, which accounts in a large measure 
for the little care there is about it, — for the un- 
dertone of feeling which I know exists in many 
breasts, that an eternal life, according to the 
modes of presentation in the Church, is not 
worth having and would be insufferably tedious. 

Now as to external details, it may do no good, 
and therefore we may have no right to speculate — 
I mean as to where the spiritual world is, whether 
we shall have visible organizations or not, and 
what sized beings we shall be. But as to the 
essential conditions and occupations of that world, 



54 



Christian Thought of 



I hold that we have a right to think about it, and 
that we ought to, and that very much of the prac- 
tical power of the future life over us consists in 
the kind of speculation we entertain, the quality 
of the musings we indulge. If we think of it 
only now and then as a state where final retribu- 
tion shall be executed upon souls for their good 
or evil in this life, it will simply affect us now 
and then with a spasm of fear, but our inmost 
reverence will not be stimulated and fed. If we 
conceive of it as a vast stretching kingdom of 
haze off beyond our horizon, where ghosts live, it 
will have an influence upon our lives about as 
great as such an expanse of mist would have 
upon the orbit of the solid earth. We must make 
it in our imagination what the spirit of Christianity 
would have us make it, — a world for the exercise 
of the great powers of our humanity, and there- 
fore a world more real, more intense, more vital 
and moral, than this plane of existence. We 
must think of its occupations and business as 
appealing to and attesting the distinguishing- 
faculties of our manhood and womanhood ; then 
it will be a reality, a glorious, solemn, and prac- 
tical reality to us. 

" As we have borne the image of the earthy, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly " ; this 
is the foundation fact on which our conceptions 
of the future must be built. We know what 
the image of the earthy is. It is a visible and 
physical organization ; it is a set of instruments 



the Futtire Life. 



55 



for the soul, — senses, bones, nerves, muscles, and 
blood, which serve to bring it into communion 
with truth, and which also claim the care and ser- 
vice of the soul, to supply their needs and to 
increase their pleasure. We shall bear the image 
of the heavenly. What does this mean but that 
our inmost nature, that which makes us children 
of the Infinite, shall have an organization which 
shall be the very form and image of itself, — not 
physical, not putting it in material connection 
with material things, and therefore not enslaving 
it to physical objects, but an organization bring- 
ing it directly in contact with eternal things and 
the laws of the spiritual universe. To bear the 
image of the heavenly, is it not to have our true 
humanity glorified and ripened, so that we shall 
not be composite creatures, half earth and half 
soul, but wholly of the substance of that which 
makes us kindred with God, and thus constantly in 
relation with the essences of things and subject 
more intensely to the moral dominion of the 
Creator ? And this heavenly nature, is it not our 
faculty of intelligence, our social capacities, our 
attraction towards duty and delight in it, our love 
of good, and the ability to serve it, and to revere 
and love God, the centre and fountain of it ? 
And if we conceive of the future life as the sphere 
for the exercise and training of this heavenly 
nature, what momentous reality invests it, how 
sublime and practical the conception of it be- 
comes ! 



56 



Christian Thought of 



Think, my friends, how little of what makes 
you a man is tasked or developed in this world, 
and simply because you bear the image of the 
earthly. Business activity absorbs a great por- 
tion of the time, and that is related to the lower 
physical nature. It is for the purpose of securing 
a living, it is not for life. It is to procure a house 
to shelter the body against physical forces ; it is 
to obtain food to keep up the partnership between 
the earthly frame and the heavenly nature ; it is 
to secure a position in society according to the 
conventional estimates that have grown out of 
wealth and leisure and blood, all of which are 
incidents to that image of the earthy which we 
bear now. It is really surprising, it is over- 
whelming, how much of the activity and the 
wasting toil on this planet, the fatigue of the 
muscles in physical drudgery, the constant cun- 
ning of the brain in schemes of commerce, the 
toil of pens upon ledgers and accounts, the wear 
and tear of the mind in the details of great 
professions, the vast proportion of that industry 
that whitens the sea with ships, and covers the 
land with houses, and fills the air with the hum 
of work, and covers the soil with busy husband- 
men, and tires the bodies and brains of the vast 
majority on this planet every day, so that they are 
glad at night to drop into sleep as the richest 
boon of Providence, — how vast a proportion of 
all this is demanded simply by our fleshly organ- 
ization, has scarcely any connection with our real 



the Future Life. 



57 



humanity, but is the tax of exertion and weariness 
for the gift of this image of the earthly in which 
we are created here. 

Suppose that your business relations should be 
stripped away from you, — your ties to the shop, 
your calls to the counter, your duties at the ledger, 
your name and fame and responsibilities on State 
Street, or your position in your profession, — how 
much would seem to be rent away, and yet what 
is left of you ? Why, so much is left that nothing 
seems to have been taken. Your intellect is left, 
with its relations to the whole world of truth • 
your taste is left, and the whole loveliness of the 
universe is ready to feed it ; your heart is left, 
and all humanity with its calls for friendship and 
love and service are around it ; your faculty of 
reverence, your power of worship, your spiritual 
sensibilities, are left, and God remains as before 
the Supreme Mind, the highest holiness, the un- 
speakable love, asking for your adoration, your 
service, and your gratitude. 

What now if God should ordain that from this 
hour there should be no need of physical toil 
upon this globe ? What if by a Divine decree our 
bodies should be made insensible to winds, and 
storms and climates, and dispossessed of hunger 
and thirst, so that they should grow to maturity 
and remain there without any dependence upon 
the outer world ? Such a judgment would in- 
stantly turn the interests and the labor of men 
upon the realities connected with their internal 
3* 



58 Christian Thought of 



nature. Instead of trying to get corn and grapes, 
despotic cotton, and infamous tobacco out of the 
earth, they must try to get truth out of it ; instead 
of studying the sky to learn how to guide ships 
more safely and make more money by the swift 
flight of magnificent clippers over the ocean, they 
must study the land of God's wisdom for the sake 
of the brain rather than the purse. The ambi- 
tion and toil to build up stately palaces for the 
body's home would gradually be turned into the 
ambition for a palace of truth where the intellect 
should dwell. A man would come to be ac- 
counted rich by his qualities, his knowledge, and 
his friends ; wisdom would be indeed more pre- 
cious than rubies ; and the soul's happiness would 
depend on its friendship with God and the peace 
of faith. If we could live on this earth forever 
under such conditions, it would begin to be 
apparent very soon how subtle and strong the 
laws of heavenly order are. What could a mind 
do that had no appetite and would not seek to 
stimulate one ? and what would a soul be with no 
pure delight in the beauty of the world, no deep 
love of its kindred and humanity, no powers of 
meditation, no hearty reverence for God or desire 
for deeper baptism in his spirit ? Condemned to 
live forever with no other business to occupy it 
than to deal with substantial things by undying 
faculties, the great avenues of science for State 
Street and Wall Street, books of wisdom for ledg- 
ers, academies and athenaeums for exchanges 



the Future Life. 59 

and banks, truths for doubloons, grades of men- 
tal attainment for aristocracies, Humboldts and 
Newtons for the grandees of society, Shake- 
speares and Dantes for presidents and kings ; no 
politics possible by which a mean man could get 
power or a brutal soul corrupt the eloquence of 
Senates ; no food but kindly sentiment, no wine 
of delight but holy love, no escape from the do- 
main of inward qualities, and the rank they give, 
into external avocations and the conventional 
distinctions that grow out of the supremacy of 
physical necessities now, — would not a soul find 
itself in a world more substantial, more vital, 
more glorious, yes, and more terrible too, than it 
dwells in now, amid markets and ships and 
stocks and stores, and with a life-lease of only 
some threescore years? And all this simply by 
annulling the needs of a bodily organization ; 
not by taking it away, but by cancelling its hun- 
ger and thirst and its sensibility to heat and 
cold. 

But those words, " We shall also bear the image 
of the heavenly," outlining for us the prominent 
condition of the future life, call on us to conceive 
a world where truth shall be more near and more 
brilliant than our senses will show it here, where 
the whole being shall be spiritual, and instead of 
being half bone and stomach and liver and 
lungs, we shall be wholly made up of what we 
are mentally, and in affection, in will, in reverence, 
and in soul. It is this conception which makes 



6o 



Christian Thought of 



the future life more real than this one. What we 
are here — nothing of our accidents and our shams, 
but what we are — goes there, and goes among 
everlasting realities. Our bodies here are simply 
the pods which break at death and shed the loos- 
ened substance into the all-embracing world of 
truth and spirit. Just as we are, cut loose from our 
coffers and our station, released from the chrysalis 
of our parlors, our silks and satins, our brilliant or 
tattered drapery of circumstances, our plenty or 
poverty, we go with our mental and social and 
spiritual substance into the world that has no 
meat and drink, no occupations and dignities but 
such as are related to our enduring undermost 
humanity. 

Brethren, is there any speculation about this ? 
Is it not simply the natural conception of what 
that life must be, if we have no bones and sinews, 
if " there is no sea there," and so no traffic in 
coin and bills of exchange ? And is it not this per- 
fect naturalness of conception that makes the 
solemnity of that world, when we think of people 
here ? Can any sensuous imagery about the judg- 
ment bear with it the terror that invests that state 
when we say that it is the .field for the develop- 
ment of our eternal nature, and when we see 
how little people are doing here for that nature ? 
We talk about preparation for heaven on the 
death-bed ; but can the death-bed alone give you 
an interest in truth more than in money, if your 
life has been the other way ? a desire for loveli- 



the Future Life. 



61 



ness and good more than for sensual indulgence? 
a rooted habit of worship and communion rather 
than a supreme love of the distinctions and pass- 
ing good that belong to this world ? With my- 
self I know it is this which arrests me most 
powerfully and pains me most deeply when I 
think of lost time and neglected opportunities, 
and gaining habits not in accordance with heav- 
enly truth, — the thought what preparation is this 
for the great work of life yet to come ; what 
foundation is this, what symmetry of powers, 
what robustness of spiritual constitution, for the 
business of the soul when it sloughs off the body 
and steps into its own world ? No man can 
frighten me with pictures of an outward hell, and 
a malignant devil, and a judgment-seat curtained 
with lightnings and smoke. That is poor tawdry 
stuff, fit only for the barbarous childhood or the 
dotage of piety. But any eloquence that pictures 
the poverty of the soul for study and worship 
and love, its slavery to passions when it is yet to 
go where passions have no sustenance, its fitness 
to deal only with bricks and mortar, laces and 
velvets, cargoes and notes, dinners and wine, 
when it is hurrying through these to a great sphere 
of life where these cannot enter, but where every- 
thing is substantial, — this, whatever it may do for 
others, thrills me, startles me, and makes me ask 
about my preparation, that is, the whole prepara- 
tion of taste and manhood for the world of which 
the tomb is the robing-room. 



62 



Christian Thought of 



Think of carrying some of the habits and dis- 
tinctions there that enter so deeply into the struct- 
ure of life here. Think of carrying our aristoc- 
racies there, of .asking about an angel or a saint, 
radiant with the joy and the love of all goodness, 
of what family it came, or how respectable its an- 
cestors were upon the earth ! Think of the poor 
exclusives from this sphere carrying their petty 
measures, which limit their sympathies on earth, 
into the world of substance, setting up their little 
coteries to cut Gabriel if he did not belong to their 
set, or exclude some spirit whose brow is freighted 
with truth, if he was not born quite high enough 
to suit their fancy! Ah, is it not this that makes 
the comfort to our sense of justice, while it makes 
in part the terror of that life, that all the men not 
recognized here because of some superficial infirm- 
ity or defect take their rank instantly in that state ? 
Men of ill success from no fault of theirs, men with 
aptitudes for service for whom no place was opened, 
preachers laden with wisdom and electric with the 
Holy Ghost but with a poor larynx, so that their 
churches are half empty, while good elocutionists 
of lower truth are popular, — all souls unjustly 
rated here, go to their place in God's kingdom of 
substance and find their sphere of service ready. 
It is what there is in us that is heavenly, what is 
related to the deeps of God's wisdom which are 
inexhaustible, what responds to his art which is 
undrainable, what can come into communion with 
his life, — only this that will avail us there; for our 



the Future Life. 



6 3 



business will be to grow in knowledge, in friend- 
ships, in service, and in joy. 

When a man comes to lie down in the tomb, 
that is what we think of at once in connection 
with his speedy transit into the curtained world, — ■ 
not how much money and reputation has he, not 
how much profession of penitence did he make 
in his last hour, but, when his breath stops, we 
ask, how much mind, heart, and soul had he ; how 
much hunger for truth, loveliness, and good to 
carry into the world where all our faculties are 
related to those realities, and where there is noth- 
ing to distract us from the knowledge and the feel- 
ing of our poverty, if we have nothing but frivolous 
and earthly appetites and tastes. 

This, according to my thought, is the Christian 
way of conceiving the future, the way suggested 
and indorsed by the Easter festival which restored 
the highest being among the children of God to 
the earth again through a yawning tomb. It is a 
world of faculties where we keep every power that 
glorifies and shall be set to the great business of 
life, and which grows out of the gifts and the needs 
belonging to our humanity. There ought to be no 
haze about that state. There is no more mystery 
about the question where it is than there is about 
the question where God is ; and yet, if we are 
not practically Atheists, we must believe in God, 
the creative thought and goodness, as firmly as in 
the visible and solid products of his thoughts. 
Perhaps one other sense might be endowed upon 



G4 Christian Thought of 



us, that would be as potent in disclosing that 
world to us as the lifting of an eyelid in relation 
to the world of light and hues. At any rate, it 
must be as real to our faith, if it is worth believ- 
ing in at all, as the world of infinite truth, the 
realm of eternal beauty, of the deeps of goodness, 
and our faculties, the substantial powers of our 
manhood, which are related to all these. 

To my mind one of the sublimest records of 
history is the reply of old heathen Socrates to 
his judges, when they condemned him, at seventy 
years old, to die. " If death," said he, " be a 
removal from hence to another place, and if all 
the dead are there, what greater blessing can 
there be than this, my judges? At what price 
would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus 
and Musaeus, with Hesiod and Homer? I go to 
meet them, and to converse with them, and to 
acquaint myself with all the great sages that have 
been the glory of the past, and that have died by 
the unjust sentence of their time." That is what 
we need, — to think of the future, not as the dun- 
geon where the wicked are locked up forever in 
an arbitrary doom, and the good shut apart from 
the evil to enjoy forever the consciousness of 
being saved from perdition, but with vigorous im- 
agination to regard it as the great sphere of life, 
filled with society amid whose myriads we must 
rank according to quality, overarched with all the 
glory of God's wisdom, and flooded with the efflu- 
ence of his holiness and love, with continual occu- 



the Ftiture Life. 



65 



pations for the exploring mind of Newton, for the 
massive understanding of Bacon, for the genius 
of Shakespeare, for the reverent intellect of Chan- 
ning, for the saintly heart of Fenelon, — with 
duties for every faculty and every affection, and 
with joys proportioned exactly to our desire of 
truth, our willingness of service, and the purity 
of love that makes us kindred with Christ and 
God. 

I have spoken of the great faculties of our na- 
ture as passing into the future to be educated, but 
I have not ranked them. Of course the highest 
is love, and the order of the future seems most 
clear and most impressive to my mind, when I 
think that we shall go to our places there accord- 
ing to our love rather than our wisdom. It will 
be part of our business to become acquainted with 
God outwardly by the intellect ; but the great law 
of life will be more fully manifest there than even 
here, that our joy shall consist in the quality of 
our affections, in our sympathy and our charity. 
Though we have the gift of prophecy and under- 
stand all mystery and all knowledge, and though 
we have all faith so that we could remove moun- 
tains, and have not charity, we shall be nothing. 
Glorious will it be, no doubt, in that world of sub- 
stance to be surrounded with the splendors of 
God's thought, to have the privilege of free range 
whithersoever taste may lead through the domains 
of infinite art, to enjoy the possibilities of reception 
from the highest created intellects ; but our bliss, 



66 



Christian Thought of 



the nectar of the soul, will flow from our conse- 
cration, our openness to the love of God, and our 
desire of service to his most needy ones. 

For, brethren, let us associate also with the 
future the business and the glory of practical ser- 
vice. All degrees of spirits float into that realm 
of silence. Ripe and unripe, mildewed, cankered, 
stunted, as well as stately and strong and sound, 
they are garnered for the eternal state by death. 
Is Christ, whose life was sympathy and charity 
upon the earth, busy in no ministries of instruc- 
tion and redemption there? Has Paul no mis- 
sionary zeal and no heart of pity for the Antiochs 
and the Corinths that darken and pollute the 
eternal spaces? Has Loyola lost his ambition to 
bring the heathen hearts to the knowledge of 
Jesus ? Will not the thousands of the merciful 
who have found it their joy here to collect the 
outcasts under healthier influence, to kindle the 
darkened mind, to clothe the shivering forms of 
destitution, to carry comfort to sick-beds, and cheer 
into desolate homes, — will not the divine brothers 
and sisters of charity, who are the glory of this 
life, find some call and some exercise for their 
Christlike sympathy in that world ; in that world 
which is colonized by millions of the heathen and 
the unfortunate v the sin-sick, the polluted, and the 
ignorant, every year? O, doubt not, brethren, 
that the highest in Heaven are the helpers, the 
spirits of charity, the glorified Samaritans who 
penetrate into all the abysses of evil with their 



the Future Life. 



6 7 



aid and their hope. Doubt not that there will 
be ample opportunities for the exercise of our 
divinest faculties, and that we are prepared for its 
joys just as we are furnished with sympathies, 
educated on the earth by the blessings and the 
cheer they have scattered among the wastes. The 
healthiest words I have ever read about Heaven 
are these simple and cool statements of Sweden- 
borg : " There are societies there whose employ- 
ments are to take care of infants; there are other 
societies whose employments are to instruct and 
educate them as they grow up ; there are others 
who in like manner instruct and educate boys 
and girls, who are of a good disposition from edu- 
cation in the world and come thence into heaven; 
there are others who teach the simple good from 
the Christian world and lead them in the way to 
heaven ; there are others who in like manner 
teach and lead the various Gentile nations ; there 
are others who defend novitiate spirits, which are 
those who have recently come from the world 
from infestations by evil spirits ; there are some 
also who are present to those who are in the lower 
earth; and also some who are present to those 
who are in the hells and restrain them from tor- 
menting each other beyond the prescribed limits ; 
there are also some who are present to those who 
are raised from the dead. All and each are co- 
ordinated and subordinated according to Divine 
order, and taken together make and perfect the 
general use, which is the general good." 



68 Christian Thought of 



How really solemn this view of the future makes 
the present world seem ! It is a continual appeal 
to the heart and to the will. If we could all look 
ahead but a few years, we should see ourselves 
lifted out of the world of circumstances and grad- 
uated in the world of substance, just as we are 
dependent for our dignity, our resources, and our 
joy upon the development and strength of our 
human qualities, set to the work of life perhaps 
to begin the very alphabet of mental and moral 
progress. O, what a thought it is which the Eas- 
ter day flashes into our bosoms, that this is only 
the threshold of our life, and that our real life is 
to consist not in wealth and pleasure, but in truth 
and love. My brother, your sin, if not renounced 
and repented of, your evil habit forming so slowly 
and by subtle aggregations, is casting a long 
shadow far out beyond the sunset • it is pledging 
your rank and mortgaging your peace in the world 
of truth towards which you are flitting. Your 
good resolutions, your efforts to enlarge and culti- 
vate your soul, your nourishment of charity, are 
pouring a stream of light and hope on to the 
future, or, rather, they are making your soul buoy- 
ant and translucent for the serene atmosphere and 
spiritual sunbeams of eternity. To the eyes of 
men you may be rated now for what you have, 
and the scale on which you can live, — your money 
at interest, your splendid home, your position in 
the world of shows, — but think, I pray you, how 
small and empty are such estimates before the fact 



the Future Life. 



6 9 



that soon you are to enter the halls of the great 
house not made with hands, and begin life on 
your capital of mind and heart, of reverence and 
charity. 

What we need is to banish all haze from our 
conceptions of the reality of that state, so that 
we can think of it heartily and talk about it to 
each other with clear eye and open brow, as we 
would talk of some great university or gorgeous 
landscape of a foreign land. Thus only can we 
have any comfort when our dearest are transferred 
hence. What is so inspiring, what aspect of our 
humanity is so lofty and divine, as when a Chris- 
tian mother, over the hallowed clay of a little one, 
can say with assured faith : " This was only the 
earthy image of an innocence, a wonder, and a 
love that have been withdrawn into the deeps of 
eternal life, into that world of truth and essences 
and peace that is near me in my prayers. Its 
dawning faculties, which I loved so to watch and 
guide, are more precious to God than to me, and 
he has lifted them to a state of being where a 
purer light and more delightful splendors than the 
earthly sun sheds or shines upon, surround its 
unfettered spirit. It is mine still through my 
faith in God, and my assurance of the supremacy 
of spirit over clay." That is the way to think of 
the future world, — not in weak fancy, but in a 
conviction that our powers of thought, feeling, and 
worship are our real substance here ; that what 
we know of the universe is limited by the few 



fo Thought of the Future Life. 

avenues open in our fleshly organization, and 
that truth and love and right are infinite, and will 
be revealed to us in far higher and more sublime 
ways as soon as the carnal framework of our in- 
tellect and soul is stricken from partnership with 
our inmost substance. 

1854. 



True Spiritual Communications. 71 



V. 



TRUE SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



For our conversation is in heaven." — Philippians iii. 20. 



ASTER Sunday, the second festival of im- 



1 j mortality in Christendom, seems to me to 
offer a peculiarly appropriate season to consider 
the meaning and methods of communion with 
the spiritual world, or what it is to have com- 
munication from that world. There is peculiar 
need that the subject shall be treated now as 
carefully and thoroughly as possible, and in the 
light of principles. 

It is not only true that there is a spiritual 
world with which we can have communication, 
but it is true that the great purpose of life is to 
bring us into communion with it. 

But the first question of interest is, What is the 
spiritual world ? How shall we define it ? Have 
you ever formed a clear idea for yourself on this 
point ? Have you ever raised the question with 
your own mind? If not, all your beliefs and 
feelings as to what intercourse with that world is, 
and the methods of attaining it, may be inade- 
quate, superficial, and confused. 




72 Ti'iie Spiritual Communications. 

We ought to be careful not to confound the 
spiritual world with the next life. The spiritual 
world and the world of spirits are two very differ- 
ent things, — things just as different as the truth, 
essence, forces, of the Christian religion, and the 
visible persons that constitute this congregation. 
A man may have the truth of the future life de- 
monstrated to him, he may get the assurance that 
there are myriads of persons who once dwelt on 
the globe now living in disembodied form, — 
yes, he may even see and talk with one of those 
unfleshly colonists of the unseen sphere, without 
receiving any truly spiritual impression and influ- 
ence. Just as a Hindoo may hear that there are 
Christian countries, that they are inhabited by 
millions of people, and may receive documents 
and letters from some of them, or even be visited • 
by one or two or a dozen of them from England 
or America, and yet receive no communication 
from the Christian religion, get no idea of it, and 
be carried no nearer to the sphere of its truth and 
power. And all because the persons that live in 
outward Christendom, with whom he is brought 
in contact by letter or conversation, do not have 
any of the life of Christianity to communicate. 
They are not in connection with it spiritually, and 
cannot transmit and diffuse it. And so, if a 
ghost should come to our chamber and tell us 
that there is a kingdom of ghosts just beyond the 
grave, we might be convinced in that way that 
men do not die when their breath ceases, we 



True Spiritual Communications. 73 

might be incited to turn our interest to the sub- 
ject of the spiritual side of life, if we had not 
believed in immortality before ; but of itself that 
knowledge that there is a world of spirits on the 
other side of the tomb would not be a communi- 
cation from the celestial sphere. 

The spiritual world is the world in which souls 
live, and from which they draw their nutriment, 
whether in the body or out of the body. It is the 
outflow of the life of God, — his power, his 
thought, his love. The spiritual world is the 
world of reality and substance. It is the ground- 
work and truth of all life and of everything we 
see. Every flower, every tree, every plant, every 
star, exists because it is a receptacle of the Di- 
vine vitality. It was organized and is sustained 
by his thought and his goodness, and we compre- 
hend it, we really see it, when it is translucent 
with the rays of the Infinite life, and brings us 
into fellowship of mind or heart with God. The 
visible material world is the shell of which the 
spiritual world is the soul. It is the series of 
printed signs of which the spiritual world consti- 
tutes the sense. When you read the sentences 
which Burke or Bacon has written, you do not 
stop to study the letters or shape of the types 
that cover their pages. The substance you are 
after is the wisdom and eloquence which they 
poured from their minds, and which the types 
record. You get into communion with the spirit- 
ual world, to which those inky paragraphs are the 
4 



74 True Spiritual Communications. 

portals, as you feel your intellect penetrated, and 
your passions stirred, with the light and heat that 
streamed, in their creative mood, from their 
genius. And the visible universe is the vast 
array of types, not simply once set up, but con- 
tinually created and composed by the Infinite 
Mind, to convey his wisdom and love. 

We have the privilege, therefore, of living in 
the spiritual world now. We need not wait to 
get into the next stage of existence to begin to 
enter it. All the life we have here flows from 
that world into us. We live in it and of it here, 
just as the spirits that have passed out of the 
body do. All they have to support their souls 
with is the Divine life manifested to them through 
justice, loveliness, truth, charity, as those realities 
are offered to us through nature and society and 
the Bible. We live in the spiritual world, if our 
souls are awake, precisely as they do, though 
possibly we may be one remove farther off, by 
our bodily organization, from the waves of light 
and love that flow out from heaven. 

And we ought to hold firmly to the principle 
that the spiritual faculty in us is the real organ of 
communion with the spiritual sphere. The organ 
through which we know and receive light is the 
eye. The ear enables us to hold intercourse 
with music, eloquence, and all uttered thought. 
The lungs are the channel of our reception from 
the atmosphere. And the soul, the power by 
which we become acquainted with Divine truth 



True Spiritual Communications. 75 

and respond to the breath of the Infinite Life, is 
the channel or medium, and the only channel of 
reception from the spiritual world. 

There is hardly any limit to be assigned to the 
intercourse we can hold with everlasting truth, 
which is the substance of heaven, even in this 
world, by the soul. When you look at a land- 
scape in summer, if you see simply so many trees, 
acres, cattle, stones, you are wholly in the natural 
world. You see the outside shapes and colors, 
just as a sheep or a deer does, when the scene is 
painted on its eye. If you study the soil and 
rocks so as to learn the geological truth of the 
region, how it was put together through ages of 
elaboration, by the power of God, and prepared 
for human habitation, the outside facts are at 
once a medium of Divine truth to you. A wave 
of God's life, an influence from the spiritual 
world, rolls out of the scene into your intellect, 
and to that extent you come into communion 
with the Divine sphere by your mind. If you 
see the beauty of the landscape, if the charm 
and harmony of the colors and the grouping of 
grove, meadow, hill, and stream, and the blaze 
of the overhanging blue, flecked with clouds 
that shed sailing shadows to cool the grass, 
waken in you a joy that springs from perception 
of the ineffable art of God, a richer wave from 
the spiritual world breaks through the scene upon 
your nature. If, beyond these two experiences, 
you see in the same landscape a mystic expres- 



j6 True Spiritual Communications. 

sion of the Divine goodness, — if the beauty 
glows with an exhalation of love, "like a finer 
light in light," — so that you look on the budding 
corn and the grazing life, and the peaceful min- 
istry of a thousand forces to human happiness, as 
Jesus looked upon the bounteous hills that sloped 
from the shores of Gennesaret, and if, through 
all the processes which publish that goodness, 
you see the working of laws that tell you how 
God's laws and life play in the experience of the 
human spirit, as Jesus plucked part of his gospel 
— the parable of the sower — from the various 
fortunes of the scattered grain, a still finer surge 
from the everlasting world floods you from that 
vision, and though you stand under the visible 
sun, and are in the body, and within the condi- 
tions of mortality, your soul is in communion with 
God ; you look upon one district of this world as 
an angel looks upon it ; your feet are in matter, 
your soul is in the spiritual sphere. 

You will see, too, how this principle applies to 
all productions of genius. When you read a 
book, look at a statue, examine a painting, you 
are on the natural plane, if you simply see the 
material which the creative mind used to convey 
its thought and sentiment. You pass up into 
spiritual reception in proportion as, through the 
printed eloquence, the imprisoned meaning, the 
glowing character and imagination, you rise into 
sympathy with the genius of the writer or artist, 
and lie open with him to the inspiration that 
streams out of heaven into the human soul. 



True Spiritual Communications. 77 

The soul is the organ of reception from the sub- 
stantial world. Spiritual communications appeal 
to, and are verified by, no other faculties, any 
more than light can be perceived by the ear or 
flavors by the eye. It is impossible to obtain 
communion with the essential quality of the spir- 
itual world in external ways. You can only be 
carried to the outside of the world of spirits in 
such ways. It is by something told to the inte- 
rior faculties, something superior in its grade to 
anything we can learn by logic and by sight, some- 
thing that makes us more wise in everlasting truth 
for which the world was made, more spiritual in 
feeling, that is, more pure, reverent, devout, and 
joyful, that we verify a message from the heavenly 
world. 

If an angel should come to you to-night, and 
talk a little gossip and depart, you would gain no 
communication with the spiritual sphere. You 
would only have seen a being with garments of 
light endowed with wings, — an addition to the 
lists of entomology. If the same being tells you 
something of God, of the divineness of goodness, 
of the all-penetrating grace of heaven, of the 
beauty of holiness, that thrills your soul to its 
deeps, wakes your devout affections from paraly- 
sis, and lifts you at once to clearer views of the 
worth of life, and a higher plane of feeling, then 
you have had a spiritual communication from the 
celestial deeps ; you have had that, and in addi- 
tion, the outside perception of an angel. The 



yS True Spiritual Communications. 

light of the angel adds nothing spiritual to the 
message. It would be just as much a spiritual 
communication, — because your soul would be 
opened just as really to the divine life, — if your 
next-door neighbor should give you that truth, and 
make you feel it as deeply in a conversation, or if 
it should stream upon you through a book. 

For the sake of insight into this world and its 
privileges, and into the origin of all life, we need 
to see that the spiritual world is the world of es- 
sence \ that it is revealed to souls ; that it is the 
meaning which glows through all matter; and that 
out of it flows all goodness, all truth, all enduring 
happiness on this side of the grave. 

And so we must protect ourselves from suppos- 
ing that one of necessity gets further into the spir- 
itual world by passing out of the body into the 
next life. There is an outside to the next life, as 
there is to this, and it is the inside, the core of 
truth, which the outside suggests, that is spir- 
itual there as here. If a person does not go up 
in the grade of truth, feeling, aspiration, love, in 
passing the boundaries of this world, it does not 
go essentially farther into the spiritual world, but 
only into another form of life, — the next life. It 
has changed geography and climate only. And in 
that case it has nothing to tell us, spiritually, sim- 
ply because of its removal to another street in the 
city of God. It may tell us that there is a con- 
tinued thread of existence which seeming death 
does not snap ; but, beyond that, it can give us no 



True Spiritual Communications. 79 

spiritual information which we cannot get here, 
until it gets above us morally, above the plane 
of the Bible, above the feeling and vision of the 
purest minds and souls that have lived open to 
God and heaven on the earth. 

We need to insist on this now because so many 
persons suppose that by the methods of what is 
called "modern spiritualism," they get specially 
and peculiarly into communion with the spiritual 
world. They sit around tables, have things told 
to them which, possibly, had been locked up in 
their memory, see manifestations of force which 
they cannot explain, and listen to speeches made in 
trance, and then suppose that they are in instant 
communication with the spiritual world. I have 
very little doubt that there are forces developed 
and active in many of these circles which have 
not yet been explained, which are very interesting 
as problems in science, and which seem very mys- 
terious. But I have not one particle of faith, not 
so much as a grain of mustard-seed, that these 
unexplained forces, or any fact or word that I 
ever saw, heard of, or read of in connection with 
what is called spiritualism, come from the world 
of spirits. And if they do, if they flow from 
the spirits that pretend to originate them, the 
most we can get at through them is that there is 
a continued life, that people exist after they leave 
their bodies. If a man is far down below the be- 
lief in that doctrine, and the rappings and tedious 
spellings around a table convince him of it, and 



So True Spiritual Communications. 

if those sounds and stammerings of trifles through 
the alphabet come from an honest ghost, the man 
is only lifted up to a perception of the fact of the 
future existence. If his noble faculties are not 
stirred by a higher wisdom of God, and duty, and 
charity, and the dependence of souls on God than 
the literature of this world can give him, he had 
better seek his communion with the spiritual world 
by aids from this side the line of death. 

A great many spirits belonging to the next life 
may dwell more in the natural world than we do, 
— may see things more from the outside, see less 
of God, receive less of his life, know less of the 
principles of his rule than many of us do, and so 
may have nothing to tell us that is spiritual. I 
don't want to talk with a dolt and a bore, simply 
because he has no bones and blood. Certainly, 
if I wanted to bring an intelligent stranger on 
this continent into communication with the spirit- 
ual world through the spirit of Daniel Webster, I 
should not send him to the nebulous commonplaces 
and sentimental drivel that I have seen printed as 
given from him, through writing mediums, since 
his death, that do unspeakable discredit to his 
swarthy ghost. I should send the man to his 
Plymouth oration, in which he celebrated with rev- 
erent eloquence the faith of the Pilgrims, and in- 
terpreted the providence of the Infinite in history, 
and charged the pulpit of New England to be 
faithful to its trusts, on peril of losing its character, 
by denouncing in the name of religion the trade in 



True Spiritual Communications. 81 



slaves. Then his colossal nature was open to the 
breath of heaven, and through all its pipes, rea- 
son, imagination, spiritual sensibility, charity, an 
organ music rolled that lifts us to-day, when we 
come within the sweep of it, into the vision of 
principles and enthusiasm for holy truth. 

Indeed, when I read the literature of modern 
spiritualism, and feel how starved and pale it is 
in all really spiritual elements compared with 
what we may have access to here, I should feel 
compassion for the souls from whom it issues if I 
believed that it came from the shrouded world, 
and should be more anxious to open communica- 
tion from this side with them for missionary pur- 
poses \ to send back through the medium that 
personates Lord Bacon some solid paragraphs 
that Bacon wrote in the flesh ; to fling over a page 
from the pen of Channing, when housed in the 
body ; to transmit a poem of Tennyson, an orac- 
ular burst from the genius of Carlyle, a principle 
from the spiritual philosophy of Swedenborg, that 
they may see how unspeakably superior we are in 
the media of intercourse with the eternal world, 
and what an impertinence it is to rap out to us 
the spelling-books of the spirit as revelations, 
when we have had, and have, the masters of ce- 
lestial wisdom. "Shall the archangels be less 
majestic and sweet than the figures that have 
actually walked the earth ? " Do large souls 
dwindle into dwarfs by their transplanting into 
the invisible realm ? Are we to account it a great 
4* F 



82 True Spiritual Communications. 

privilege to talk, by slow signs and creaking dumb- 
waiters, with creatures in the cellar, the Calibans 
of eternity, while we live in the upper chambers 
of the house cheerful with sunlight ? 

Remember that your communion with the spirit- 
ual world is conditioned on the plane of your life. 
The whole question is a question of planes. 
When a fresh principle visits you, or takes hold 
of you powerfully, that makes this world seem alive 
with the Divine Presence, so transfused with it 
as to be ready to melt into spirit; that makes your 
soul seem substantial rather than your body, and 
open to God ; that makes justice and love appear 
the solid verities in comparison with wealth and 
power and pleasure ; that makes existence valu- 
able for moral ends, the reception of the Infinite 
life and the doing of the Infinite will, — then you 
have a spiritual communication ; you have gone 
up by solid steps into the world of substance and 
light. Not when a table shakes, but when my 
soul shakes under the new light and force of a 
spiritual truth, there is a communication from the 
celestial world to me. Details of how ghosts 
live, and how near they are to you physically, and 
of what electric powers they have, are not spiritual, 
any more than gymnastic exercises which you may 
take are spiritual, or news of how your next-door 
neighbors pass the hours of the day. All this, 
of itself, is simply peeping and chatter. 

See how majestic the old Bible looms, in this 
respect, over modern methods of spiritualism ! It 



True Spiritual Communications. 83 

deals with laws and truths, not with gossip about 
the world to come ; and when it opens the por- 
tals of the heavens it is not that angels may tell 
secrets about persons and fortunes in the spiritual 
sphere, but that God may draw nearer to souls, 
breathe more of his grace, and illumine the world 
with his light. Think of lurid Sinai ! I love to 
turn to the picture of that in Exodus, after read- 
ing of furniture twistings in modern parlors. Its 
dingy sides were swathed with lightning ; it 
rocked with thunder ; to touch it was death. 
There was spiritual manifestation : in comparison 
with the paltry forces that pass for such now, — 
the electric rataplan of rappings that runs over the 
tables of a continent, — an eruption of Etna to the 
sputter and sulphur of a friction match ! And 
what was it for? To tell those soggy-minded 
Jewish slaves anything about Hades, or the fate 
of their fathers in the realm of shades ? No ; it 
was the breaking of the moral law into history. 
It was the birth-throe of the ten commandments 
— basis of all purity and civil strength — into time ; 
the laying in of the warp of Christianity into the 
loom of Providence. The cannon of Eternity 
boomed over that hour, and their echo is in his- 
tory. 

Not a word is there in the whole Old Testa- 
ment about the details and forms of the disem- 
bodied life. (The nearest to an exception is 
the intercourse of Saul with the witch of Endor, 
and she was an outlaw, and he died the next 



84 True Spiritual Communications. 

day.) But the spirit that vivifies the Old Tes- 
tament stretches and thrills language to the ut- 
most, to interpret the holiness, providence, and 
pervading life of God, the evil of sin, and the 
blessedness of obedience. 

In the New Testament the reserve is still more 
impressive. No sentences of Jesus stoop to 
human curiosity about the indoor life of heaven, 
while he is never weary of talking of the laws of 
the blessed life, and the Kingdom of Heaven that 
is within. Moses and Elias converse with him 
in the Transfiguration, — but who is the wiser for 
that dialogue ? After the resurrection, is there a 
recorded word about the scenery, the solemnities, 
the offices, of the enduring life? Be busy in duty, 
preach the Gospel everywhere, is the instruction 
of the risen Christ. Paul says that he was once 
caught up to heaven in a trance. You will read 
his statement of it in the twelfth chapter of the 
second epistle to the Corinthians. He says that 
it occurred fourteen years before he wrote that 
letter, which must have been just after his conver- 
sion, that whether he was in the body or out of 
the body he could not tell, but that he " heard 
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a 
man to utter." Never in his addresses or his let- 
ters did he attempt reports of that season, claim 
credit for being a trance medium, or even allude 
to it. It was because he had a real communica- 
tion with the ineffable light. It made him dumb 
but luminous. He showed his nearness to the 



True Spiritual Communications. 85 

spiritual world, and has left the witness of it to us, 
in the quickening sense of its reality that streams 
from his pages ; in the eloquence, choking of its 
own fulness, that utters his vision of the love of 
God, the excellence of Jesus, and the joys of a heart 
at peace with heaven ; in his appeals for brotherly 
union, his denunciation of sin from a vision of its 
foulness and terror, his description of the worth 
of charity mounting into a hymn. Even the 
book which we have named " Revelations" is not 
an unveiling of heaven, but a picture in symbols 
of the judgments about to come on the earth, and 
the splendor of the loyal and blessed kingdom 
that is to be built up here. 

The New Testament impresses us with the 
conviction that inward spiritual states, not out- 
ward tidings, are the essential methods of com- 
munion with heaven. A wise man of our day 
has written : " A man should not tell me that he 
has walked among the angels ; his proof is, that 
his eloquence makes me one." The conversa- 
tions of Jesus, the letters of Paul, bear this mark 
of birth from the deeps of heaven, that they 
wrench our inmost selfishness, and command us 
from the heights of spiritual vision, and make the 
world seem thin before the inner blaze of celes- 
tial law and love. 

The fatal mark of impotence and folly on all 
systems of communications claiming to be espe- 
cially spiritual is, that they deal with particulars, 
and bring us in contact with persons that talk 



86 True Spiritual Communications. 

weak sentiment and publish items of news. We 
can have communion with the spiritual world, 
with the very core of it. It is your call as Chris- 
tians, as men and women, as souls, to seek it, to 
pray for it, to labor for it; you should count your 
life a failure, for it is a failure, if you have no expe- 
riences of it. You gain that communion by every 
method that quickens insight in your mind, so 
that the powers and processes of nature, the 
order and bounty of the universe, the mystery of 
the stars, the purity and grace of the light, the 
opening beauty and music of the spring, the full 
pomp of the summer, are transparent media 
through which you see the penetrating and sub- 
stantial life of God, feel it working around you, 
and are drawn by it to cast yourself upon Infinite 
Love. 

You gain it by reverence for justice, by confi- 
dence in generous truth as the stable wisdom for 
nations as for men, by such perceptions of the 
divineness of charity as shall impel you to open 
your soul and offer your purse to its entrance and 
dominion. You gain it by seasons of silence, 
penitence for sin, cleansing of the windows of the 
soul for the Divine searching, prayer for the heav- 
enly light, and consecration, in the privacy of 
devotion, to the work and will of God. Thus 
you go into fellowship with the Infinite Spirit : 
the bonds of materialism are broken ; your " con- 
versation is in heaven " ; you live less in the 
body than in the spirit ; you are not a soul impris- 



True Spiritual Communications. 87 

oned in flesh, but a soul endowed with a frame 
that gives you access to the Divine glory in 
matter, while you have immediate access to the 
Divine substance and assurance of Divine grace. 

And thus, also, you increase your knowledge of 
the life to come. Modern spiritualism claims 
great advantage by assuring men directly that 
there is an immortal life. But you ought to be- 
lieve that on deeper and nobler evidence than 
physical manifestations and alphabetic spellings 
and trance impersonations. You ought to believe 
that by the inward witness of the Spirit, by the 
feeling that virtue and sanctity and all filial 
qualities of heart are independent of matter and 
above it, — the best things in the universe, the 
things God loves unspeakably, which he will not 
let die, which cannot die because they are of his 
essence. You ought to believe that your friends 
live because they are forms for this life of God, 
and were born out of God to live for him, and be 
purified by his discipline, and blessed with his 
love forever. When Thomas, the doubter, insisted 
that he would not be convinced of the reality of 
the risen Jesus until he had put his fingers in the 
prints of the nails, Jesus said, " Because thou hast 
seen me, thou hast believed : blessed are they that 
have not seen and yet have believed." And so, 
blessed are they, and purer is their faith, that turn 
with distaste from doubtful electric wonders and 
sorceries, and believe, by the soul's own witness, 
that truth and love are eternal, and that we are 



88 True Spiritual Communications. 

eternal because we partake or may partake of 
those effluences of God. In that faith, kindred 
with Paul's, leading to the insight of Jesus, we hold 
intercourse with the departed. We go up into 
sympathy with the best that have passed on. We 
rise toward the plane of souls whose utterance is 
not through physical wonders, but through charity, 
peace, prayer, and benediction. O, how we de- 
grade communion with the departed by feel- 
ing that it is gained in any other way than by 
our spiritual elevation, or that it comes in other 
forms than by inmost and unspoken sympathy, 
"when all the nerve of sense is numb, spirit 
to spirit, ghost to ghost." If you have given 
a beloved life to the keeping of God, and long 
for influence from its risen substance, you will 
feel it and find it when you find God himself. 
It will not come to you till your heart is pure 
enough or still enough to feel His breath ; and 
then you shall be conscious of its presence and 
sympathy : — 

" How pure at heart, and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead. 

" In vain shalt thou, or any, call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say 
My spirit is at peace with all. 

" They haunt the silence of the breast, 
Imaginations calm and fair, 
The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest." 



True Spiritual Communications. 



When the conversation is in heaven through 
the possession of principles that uplift life, and 
insight that discerns God, and the light that visits 
and answers prayer, we have communion with 
the spiritual world, though we see not its outward 
scenery ; we are ready for its joys and duties : 
we are in fellowship with the beloved that inhabit 
its peace ; we know and feel the privilege which 
the Easter Sunday celebrates. 

1857. 



90 



Life more Abundantly. 



VI. 

LIFE MORE ABUNDANTLY. 

" I am come that they might have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly." — John x. 10. 

" T T lt more abundantly." These are the 
JL 1 words that will determine the direction 
of our thought this morning. For I do not propose 
to follow the subject which the passage imme- 
diately suggests, that is, the manner in which 
Christ has given new life to the world, but to 
throw out some thoughts upon the general sub- 
ject of life and the increase of it. We should all 
be led to see that the Infinite grace appeals to us, 
not exclusively or exceptionally through Chris- 
tianity, but broadly through all the arrangements 
of Providence : — " Enter into life ; receive more 
and more largely from its tide ; it is prepared for 
you abundantly." 

God supplies us at birth with a certain amount 
of animal vitality, and with certain faculties tend- 
ing to various kinds and degrees of good in the 
universe, and by means of these we are to draw 
our life from the treasury of the creation and from 
God. Our success during our stay on the earth 



Life more Abundantly. 



91 



is to be measured by the amount and kind of life 
we derive from the fountains that flow from the 
Infinite fulness. 

Life may be increased, — this is the most im- 
portant fact to be noticed and enforced in all that 
we are called to consider now, — increased almost 
indefinitely. Even in the physical department we 
may have it " more abundantly " by obeying the 
plain conditions. We are not fated to a short 
allowance or a fixed amount, but are endowed 
with the power of growing, and are tempted by a 
large, unmeasured possibility. Through exercise, 
and the proper choice and economy in food, we 
not only keep well, but we enlarge the stream of 
vitality. And the law by which a man purifies and 
refreshes the currents of his blood, makes the eye 
clear, the tendons taut, the nerves calm, the chest 
capacious, the step elastic, and knots the muscles 
by discipline to such sturdiness that, though once 
they were tired with a slight burden, now they will 
lift nearly half a ton, is a law that can be traced 
up into the mental and moral regions, and be 
seen to govern the spirit as well as the frame. 

Life may be increased. A great many persons 
try to increase it by intensity. Dwelling on a low 
plane, developing none of the faculties of the 
highest order, they try to compensate the essen- 
tial poverty of the career on which they start, by 
the concentrated interest they devote to it, and 
the number of objects or pleasures they crowd 
into their whirling days. This is what is usually 



92 Life more Abundantly. 



called now "a fast life." It may be a fast life 
of business ; it may be one of fashion ; it may be 
one of guiltier pleasure ; — whatever be the form 
of it, the distinction of it is the desire to do and 
live a great deal in a short time, and to escape 
the misery of a plodding existence in the common 
ruts, by giddiness in occupation, or the continued 
stimulant of the superficial sensibilities into de- 
light. 

Now, setting aside the absolutely forbidden and 
sinful sources of pleasure, there is much to be said 
besides mere satire and condemnation about those 
who live intensely in these days. In business 
many have no choice. The conditions are such 
that they must pledge every power of their man- 
hood to the affairs of the store, the office, and 
the street, or nothing. They cannot control their 
occupation. While they remain in it, they are 
bound to it like Mazeppa to the wild horse, or 
Ixion in the fable to the wheel, and must follow 
its rate of motion. Then there are others who 
have never had the nobler faculties awakened 
early in life, in the home, or under their teachers, 
and stimulated with sacred appetite towards the 
higher grades of good which ennoble the human 
being ; and so when they are set to the common 
occupations of life, all the energies of their nature, 
if it be a powerful one, must issue through that 
single vent. Whatever music they make must be 
on one string, for no others have been chorded or 
tuned ; and of course they must make up in 



Life more Abundantly. 



93 



rapidity of movement for the lack of breadth and 
variety of organs. And if a man is to be limited 
to one narrow range, either by an inward or out- 
ward necessity, we cannot blame him for pouring 
as much through the single channel as it can 
hold. It is a sad thing to be reduced to a mere 
top in this universe ; but if a man comes to that, 
we can't blame him if he prefers spinning fast to 
spinning slowly. 

All aspects of an intense and superficial life are 
sad, but the saddest are those which appear when 
a man chooses it, especially the brilliant and 
profligate side of it, with the intention of increas- 
ing the quantity and richness of his experience, 
of living while he lives. It is under doom. Not 
only is it guilt, and liable to surprises of retribu- 
tion, but it is folly. It is within the coil and 
pressure of slow but steady and unrelenting laws. 

God has ordained a certain rate of motion or 
intensity for every faculty and every kind of work 
which body or mind can perform. All increase 
of this rate is purchased at the expense of fibre, 
of the faculty itself. If you crowd more business 
into a year than the rate of your brain's action 
and your frame's power of steady working can 
sustain, you are consuming capital. If you study 
faster than the mind can digest what you import, 
you are spending faculty. You may insist on 
more and stronger sensations than the system 
naturally supplies, but you shorten or paralyze 
life as the price. God has mixed a certain amount 



94 



Life more Abundantly. 



of oxygen in the air. The proportion is small. 
A man may contrive apparatus for doubling the 
quantity he will breathe, in order to be more ex- 
hilarated. But he burns up his tissues as the 
inseparable condition. This is the law through- 
out the circuit of experience. 

There is a story of an Eastern monarch who 
had been a noble ruler, but who received a mes- 
sage from an oracle that he was to live only twelve 
years more. He instantly resolved that he would 
turn these to the most account, and double his life 
in spite of destiny. He fitted up his palace 
gorgeously. He denied himself no form of pleas- 
ure. His magnificent gardens were brilliantly 
lighted from sunset to sunrise, so that darkness 
was never experienced within the circuit of his 
estate ; so that, whenever he was awake, the 
stream of pleasure was ever flowing, and even 
the sound of revelry was never still. Thus he 
determined to outwit the oracle by living nearly 
twenty-four years in twelve. But at the end of 
six years he died. The oracle foreknew and 
made allowance for his cunning scheme. No 
doubt, on his death-bed, the monarch saw the 
vigor and despotism of the laws of life with which 
it is vain for finite art and will to wrestle. The 
story is true in the spirit, though it may be fable 
in its details. It is one of those things of which 
we may say that it is. real though it never hap- 
pened. But it has happened essentially in all 
ages, and in untold thousands of instances. It is 



Life more Abundantly. 



95 



only a legendary dress of the law, as true in the 
moral world as in the region of mechanics, that 
what is gained in intensity is lost in time. You 
cannot " have life more abundantly " by making 
the soul crouch down into the body, and diffusing 
it through the fleshy envelope, so that it loses the 
acquaintance with its own higher realm in the 
added zest of mortal pleasure. There is the most 
tragic waste of faculty. The end of such effort is 
disgust, weariness, and, in the inmost being, the 
sense of emptiness, folly, and unrest. For one, I 
would ask no more serious book of revelation 
on the side of law than would be made up by 
the confessions of vacancy, wretchedness, inward 
shrivelling, doubt, and despair, that have come 
from the most brilliant fast men of the world. 

There is another kind of life that we may call 
broad. Life is increased in this way by putting 
out more faculties into communication with nature 
and society. In fact, it is by the unfolding of 
faculties that all additions to life are received. 
Each one of our powers is a receptacle for some 
element of the Divine good, but it is not like a 
goblet, and it does not receive as water is poured 
into a vase ; its method is rather that of a seed. 
When put into proper relations with its objects it 
germinates and absorbs from the currents and 
forces outside of it, and transmutes them into its 
own quality and substance. 

Some men's natures are simply little grass-plots, 
and only the smaller powers of their spirits are 



9 6 



Life more Abundantly. 



put in communication with the bountiful life of 
Providence ; just as a grass-seed can weave noth- 
ing more than a slim strip of fluted green out of 
the air, the dew, and the sun. Some have wider 
areas, and are adorned with vines and grain and 
shrubbery. Others still have these and deeper 
faculties at work, giving us the munificence of 
nature transformed into lordly trees like oaks and 
elms. 

It is inspiring to think how some natures live 
broadly enough to take in elements of growth 
from the farthest quarters of the visible universe. 
There are great naturalists living now that have 
received nutriment for their life from the lowest 
discovered stratum of the earth and from the 
most distant patch of milky light in immensity. 
This is a method of receiving life "more abun- 
dantly," and in saying now that, according to the 
Christian wisdom, it is not the highest way, I am 
not going to criticise it but to commend it. It 
has often been the case that the good which the 
world can furnish and the good which religion 
can furnish have been so contrasted as to make 
everything the first supplies appear shallow in 
comparison with the resources of the other sphere. 
But there is unmixed good to be obtained from 
the world by relating the proper faculties rightly 
to it, and it is a noble spectacle when a man is 
seen into whom life is pouring richly from all por- 
tions of the creation and of society. It is grand 
to see a man taking interest in truth, feeding his 



\ 

Life more Abundantly. 97 



mind with it, enlarging his hunger for it ; to see 
him not shut up in the interest of his own family 
merely, but concerned for the community, and 
pouring out some power from himself into the 
stream of general interest ; to see him not indif- 
ferent to social pleasures, but tasting them in 
proper subordination to the dignity of his being, 
and sunning his heart in their sweet light ; given 
to wide reading ; finding refreshment in music ; 
having a taste for art and refining it ; in a word, 
broadening his life in every direction where a dis- 
tinct faculty which God has organized into his 
nature can solicit and absorb substance. 

The more pure fountains that are practically 
open to the mind the better. The more powers 
we can have aroused in us, in days like these, 
•when the temptations and pressures are so power- 
ful that would make a man the mere handle of 
an implement or the fraction of a business, the 
better is it morally for the community. Think 
of narrowness of life in a world so rich ! It is as 
if a machine-shop furnished for building steam- 
engines should turn out pins. Think of being 
planted in this universe, as each human being is, 
and consider what comes of it usually ! If there 
were a rich prairie district as large as New Eng- 
land in which, though the most various and vital 
seeds should be dropped, and supplied with rain 
and light, nothing would grow but dandelions and 
white-weed, what a strange problem it would be 
for scientific farmers, what scrutiny would be 
5 g 



9 8 



Life more Abundantly. 



applied by chemists of the soil, what mourning 
over such waste would be raised by political 
economists ! The soil seemingly rich, the climate 
fine, and yet no trees, no fruit, no grain, no flowers 
producible, but only puny spears of almost worth- 
less vegetable life ! And yet how often does this 
globe, poised amid the unveiled universe, turn out 
a man that, for breadth of attainment in knowl- 
edge and life, stands to the rest of his fellows as a 
majestic pine to a buttercup or a grass-blade ! I 
delight to think of men like Humboldt and Arago, 
Herschel and Agassiz, and to see in them that 
the riches of infinite truth are not wholly wasted 
on us; that God does not rain his wisdom through 
all our air and pack his treasures beneath our soil 
entirely for nothing, so far as the enlarging of the 
boundaries of human spirits is concerned. And 
one of the pleasantest sights in society, next in 
grade to seeing a character beneficent and rever- 
ential, is that of a person busy with a mechanic's 
task or a merchant's toil, who insists on remember- 
ing that he has a mind, and who, through some 
department of science, — Botany, Geology, Zo- 
ology, Astronomy, Optics, or some regular read- 
ing in History or Biography or Travel, — keeps 
up communication with the world of truth without 
him, and sees to it that, while he gains in wealth 
perhaps, he does not shrivel as a man, but as he 
gains in money gains life, too, more abundantly. 

Yet this life, though broad as we have thus 
interpreted it, may be superficial. The true abun- 



Life more Abundantly. 



99 



dince comes not from intensity, and not alone 
from the number of objects with which we are in 
communion, but from depth. A life is rich in the 
proportion that it is deep ; and it is deep to the 
extent that the moral and spiritual sentiments are 
active and healthy. This is no cant, brethren, or 
mere pulpit talk, because it is proper for such 
words to be spoken in the pulpit. This is solidly 
and scientifically true. Creeds may be false, but 
this is certain. Bibles may be mistaken, but this 
is unquestionable. The spirit that has a sense of 
justice quick and large, and lives by it in relation 
to his fellows, and tries to organize more of it 
through himself in society, lives deeper than the 
man of intellect and infinitely deeper than the 
man of pleasure. The affections are richer than 
the money-making and the truth-seeking capaci- 
ties ; and the richest affections are those which 
bind us consciously to the Infinite. Every kind 
of life is essentially superficial that does not bring 
the human heart nearer to the Infinite Presence 
and Love. 

The heart of truth is gone, and the man has 
only the shell of it, if he does not see the expres- 
sion of God's thought or providence in the splen- 
dors of order and majesty which the outward " 
world discloses. A man may know all the se- 
crets which the earth hides, every link in the chain 
of geological years, the structure and distribution 
of all the animal tribes that are and have been, — 
yes, he may untangle by his thought the meshes of 



IOO Life more Abundantly. 



midnight light, and feel that he lives amid an order 
boundless in its reach and impregnable in its sta- 
bility. And yet what if it is an atheistic order? 
What if he feels no breath of an Infinite presence 
upon his heart ? What if he discerns the traces of 
no Infinite skill in the pillars and the dome of the 
mighty palace which his thought inhabits ? What 
if no emotion is prompted in him, or tempted 
from him, of reverence to an all-penetrating intel- 
lect, of awe toward a sovereign holiness, of aspi- 
ration for the blessing of an all-sustaining love ? 
What if his knowledge be such that it has ban- 
ished poetry, mystery, and sanctity from the walls 
and the very air of nature? Then I say that, 
though the life be mentally broad, it is spiritually 
shallow. And the man who looks up to the stare 
with no knowledge of their vastness, but with in- 
stinctive recognition of a power of which they are 
mere sparkles, — the man who knows nothing of 
botany,, but takes a simple flower in his hand as 
Christ took a wild lily on a Galilean farm, feeling 
an effluence from the creative goodness in its fra- 
grance, — nay, the poor woman that could not 
stretch her mind to comprehend a single problem 
of the higher sciences, while none of them could 
shake her faith that this little globe which she 
imagines to be the centre of nature is bathed in 
providential interest, and that the grave of her 
child is the bond between her heart and heaven, 
— each has a deeper life, because a deeper fac- 
ulty awakes to receive life from the world without, 



Life more Abundantly. 



101 



than he whose brain is encircled with the icy 
crown of an unbelieving wisdom. 

Of course a thoroughly proportioned life will 
have both breadth and depth ; but we must not 
fail to see that depth is the essential thing. That 
is connected with religion ; that every mind may 
have. There are very few that can escape the 
despotism of toil for bread. There are very few 
of us that could become eminent for breadth and 
large detail of outward knowledge, even if the 
liberty to cultivate the intellect to the full were 
granted to us. But the deepest life is possible for 
us all. Christ came that the lowest as well as 
the highest might have it more abundantly. It 
is offered to you and me independently of our 
strength of mind or fulness of learning. Astron- 
omy we may not have time to study, or ability to 
master j but God, who made all worlds, is as near 
to this one as to any, and as ready to fill our spirits 
as those that live in the most distant or brilliant 
star. It is a mistake to suppose that the most 
learned man now living has any more evidence 
of God by reason of his learning than has the 
humblest person here. If one can be an atheist 
in presence of a tree, or a moss-rose, or a human 
form, or the rising and setting sun, there is no 
reason why he should not be after reading the 
works of Cuvier and the Principia of Newton. It 
is a sacred instinct, not a chain of logic, by which 
we believe in God and hold to him. 

And the religious life may be developed inde- 



102 



Life more Abundantly. 



pendently of all our learning. How much knowl- 
edge do you need, my brother, to convince you 
that you ought to obey conscience ? How wide 
acquaintance with literature to prove to you that 
you ought to bridle your selfishness, and trample 
a foul passion beneath your will ? How great 
familiarity with libraries to assure you that a dis- 
position of prayer and trust brings back a rich 
reward through inward harmony and a sense of 
peace ? This is the deep life, and we may have 
it though we be burdened, though we have little 
time for the cultivation of mental powers and the 
faculties that make life graceful. Seek these 
others, but be sure that you neglect not to seek 
this. This overflows upon all other domains of 
life and enriches them. 

And this, whatever else we have, is essential 
still. You can get along without classical learn- 
ing, without reading Cicero, without knowing the 
attractive magic of chemistry, without knowing 
the procession of ages when the earth was form- 
ing, without knowing the distance of Sirius, or the 
orbit of Neptune, or the year when Alexander 
lived, or the science of a nation's prosperity ; but 
you cannot get along without God as a power on 
your life and peace to your soul. You may slip 
along through years of business destitute of this ; 
you may try to make up for it by money, toil, 
fashion, elegance, learning, and entertainment, — 
all of which, too, are good and necessary, — but 
with these alone there will be the inward want, — 



Life more Abundantly. 



103 



deep crying unto deep, the lack of adjustment to 
the central reality, the mighty craving of the 
mightiest power within. 

Ah, how many, gifted with everything else, have 
found life insupportable, and have longed for the 
grave, from lack of the consciousness of personal 
relation to Infinite Love ! 

" Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
No life that breathes with human breath 
Has ever truly longed for death. 

" 'T is life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
O, life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that we want." 

It is no wonder that so many thousands, just in 
proportion to the awakening of their noble facul- 
ties, have found still no rest because the noblest 
has not been aroused. The more we stimulate 
the others, the more we need the religious to give 
peace amid the queries, problems, and torments 
which the others so often entail. 

And we can have this deepest life by beginning 
to live for God. Curb your passions. Begin from 
this moment to listen to the inward voice. Con- 
secrate your heart. Meditate upon the Infinite 
as the holiest and the best, set forth for our wor- 
ship not in the stars so clearly as in the heart of 
Christ. Education is no more certain to bring 
knowledge than the humble obedience to these 
conditions is sure to bring the diviner life. The 
pipe attached to the main artery that conducts 
the bounty of the lake to our city is no more sure 



104 Life more Abundantly. 

to be filled with water than our souls are to be en- 
riched with God if we desire it. Only clear the 
obstructions. Only see that the entrance of the 
channel is not choked. The best things are sure. 
Toil may not yield money. Carefulness may not 
protect health. Study may not banish error. 
The utmost art cannot keep off the final sickness 
and the call of death. But the Divine life is pos- 
sible to every one of us. " God may be had for 
the asking." The spirit that will remain when 
money flies, and still make us rich ; that will not 
waste as the body weakens, but grow stronger, 
and make us inwardly well ; that cannot crumble 
into the dust to which the frame is converted, but 
will be liberated for larger development when the 
body goes into the treasury of nature for new ser- 
vices, — is offered to-day to every soul that has 
been animated by the Infinite breath. The heaven 
of heavens cannot contain Him, yet he will abide 
in every humble and contrite heart. 

1859. 



Lessons of the DrongJit. 



105 



VII. 

LESSONS OF THE DROUGHT. 

" For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." — Matthew v. 45. 

JESUS, desiring to find the amplest natural sym- 
bol of the Divine beneficence, weaves together 
into one sentence the sunshine and the rain, com- 
pleting the rhythm which the impartiality of the 
quickening light began by the generosity of 
showers and the broad bounty of the storms. It 
is thus that they are related in the natural world. 
Together they fill out the sentence of Infinite care. 
The sun, fountain of light and heat, and store- 
house of gravitation, is the chief type of the wis- 
dom, love, and justice of the Infinite; but, as 
manifest to men, it is through its great office as 
the conjurer of clouds, and in the warm alterna- 
tion of its beams with the drifting rain, that it ful- 
fils the type of Providential mercy. 

The Sabbath hours are well improved if they 
lead us to some fresh and deeper recognition of 
God in his physical government. And if we 
should turn our thoughts this morning into the 
channel of deepest present interest, unquestion- 
5* 



106 Lessons of the Drought. 

ably they would busy themselves with the prob- 
lem of the drought ; they would associate the 
richest favor of Heaven with the gloom of heavy 
cloud and the music of rain. 

For many weeks the land has been afflicted (so 
it seems, at least, to our ignorance) by almost un- 
interrupted sunshine. From the Atlantic to the 
Mississippi the sky has bent hot, hard, and hollow 
over a parching soil. The hillsides are blasted 
with fever. The grass has been scorched. The 
fruits have shrunk. The trees are withering with 
thirst, and shedding shrivelled leaves upon the 
burning winds. The streams are dwindling; 
brooks and ponds are drunk to their springs by 
the insatiable sun. No "ribands of silver un- 
wind from the hills." The corn-harvest is smit- 
ten. The glorious promise of the early summer, 
pointing to full garners and cheap food, has died 
into the arid landscape of waste and destitution. 
Men have longed to see the beauty of clouds, but 
scarcely any vapory spots have stained the heated 
helmet of the heavens ; they have prayed for the 
cold storm-winds from the northeast to break the 
indigence of the sky, and some days the south- 
west has opened sirocco-caves and let loose airs 
that seemed outriders of earthquakes, laden with 
sulphur and smoke. It seems as though the earth 
was turning on its axis to be roasted by the sun. 
Day after day the heavens have been brass and 
the earth iron, the rain powder and dust. Read 
the accounts which every telegraph brings from 



Lessons of t7ie Drought. 107 

the West and North, and judge if anything less 
than the sultry rhetoric of Joel can describe it : 
" The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners 
are laid desolate, the barns are broken down ; for 
the corn is withered. How do the beasts groan ! 
the herds of cattle are perplexed because they 
have no pasture ; yea, the flocks of sheep are 
made desolate." Have we not been afflicted with 
incessant sunshine ? If the dark clouds should 
gather and the floods should burst over the conti- 
nent, a chorus of devout joy would rise to Heaven 
from hearts, if not from lips, more grand than the 
written one in the Oratorio of Elijah, "Thanks 
be to God, he laveth the thirsty land ! " 

What are the religious lessons of the drought ? 

First, it suggests to us the oscillations of the 
forces of nature, out of which our order and bless- 
ings are woven. The physical government of God 
seems most impressive and admirable when we 
see that it is not rigid and mechanical, but easy, 
graceful, full of play, — the harmony of constant 
alternations. We cannot prophesy weather and 
temperature as we can prophesy eclipses and the 
speed of the earth in its orbit. There are no 
statutes, there is no appointed calendar, which dry 
and wet, sunshine and cloud, must observe and 
fulfil. Yet the average of moisture and of heat 
is kept remarkably constant every year. The 
rains seem to flow by chance ; the light and 
gloom, the warmth and frost, do not fall in the 
same degrees, on the same days or weeks ; but 



io8 Lessons of the Drought, 



when the budget of the year is closed it turns out 
that the seasons, year by year, in the same dis- 
tricts, are almost all twins as to temperature and 
fertility. In fact, it is said that trees and plants 
are so nicely fitted to a certain average tempera- 
ture that they would die if the mean warmth 
should fall five degrees for a succession of two or 
three years. With how subtle a skill must law be 
inwoven by the great spirit into the world when 
the very frolic of the elements is order, and the 
gambols of winds and frosts, light and vapor, 
which no science can fathom and foretell, are the 
pulses of a vast, invariable harmony! Perhaps 
the whole range of natural religion presents no 
more beautiful and striking proof of Divine order 
in the physical world than the lecture which a 
scientific man might give to a class on rain, as he 
turned a globe or pointed to a map of the earth. 
On no two lines of latitude, he would say, will 
there be the same amount. The different winch, 
the nearness to or distance from the equator, the 
position inland or by the sea, on the east or west 
side of a mountain chain, will vary the quantity 
amazingly. But in each spot, he would tell his 
pupils, the yearly amounts will be very uniform. 
Here, he will tell them, for more than half the 
year metal will not rust under the open sky. 
Here rain will fall on almost every day of the 
year. In this spot a few inches only will damp 
the ground during a twelvemonth. But within 
these lines the quantity will not vary much from 



Lessons of the Drought. 



109 



three feet, and within these tropic boundaries 
enough will be discharged to drown the tallest 
men, while on a few spots more than twenty 
feet will be discharged from the clouds. Here it 
will be given in showers, there in storms ; here 
with thunder, there in peace. Over this district 
not a drop will fall, — the sky will not be so much 
as stained with vapor, — while he can mark out 
another region where you can prophesy, almost 
to the hour, when a three-months' baptism will 
be inaugurated. The ratio of moisture, he would 
tell them, lessens in running from the equator 
towards the poles, lessens from the sea-coast in- 
land ; and to variegate the rain-map still further, 
he would distinguish countries where rains came 
in winter, others where they fall only in autumn 
months, and others still where they are exclusively 
a summer blessing. In this way are climates 
diversified, and the products of the soil and the 
riches and happiness of man steadily provided 
and sustained. 

Is there not this wildness and waywardness in 
the earth's order, this apparent wandering of each 
element " at its own sweet will," that the religious 
sense might be swept and stimulated by it, that a 
benevolent mystery might always swathe the sport- 
ive beauty of the world ? To see annual order in 
days of chance, the direct path of Providence in 
labyrinthine windings, the expression of intelli- 
gent goodness gleaming out of the volatile ca- 
prices of natural force, — is not this the lesson 



no Lessons of the DrongJit. 



for our spirits to learn ? and that we might have 
the joy of so living that faith might have the 
quality of poetry in it, — is not this, perhaps, one 
reason why we are not set in a world whose order 
is mechanical, whose processes are all capable of 
being foreseen, flowing dull and regular as the 
machinery of a mill? 

And once in a while the extreme of oscillation 
is touched, and nature pauses there awhile, as if 
to show us for a moment how awful it would be 
if chance were the ruler, — if we did not have a 
latent confidence that the energies of nature are 
held by a will that is friendly to our race. If I 
were in danger of becoming sceptical, I believe 
that a fresh and vivid appreciation of the scien- 
tific revelations concerning our globe would appall 
me into faith. To think of this ball whirling and 
spinning about the sun, and to be an atheist ! its 
covering less in comparative thickness than a 
peach-skin, and its pulp a seething fire, and to 
feel that we are at the mercy of the forces that 
lash it like a top around the ecliptic, and of the 
raving flames that heave and beat for vent ; not 
more than an eighth of its surface inhabitable by 
man ; seas roaring around him, tropic heats smit- 
ing his brain, polar frosts threatening his blood, 
inland airs laden with fever, sea winds charged 
with consumption; hurricanes hovering in the sky, 
earthquakes slumbering under our feet; the con- 
ditions of life dependent on the most delicate oscil- 
lations of savage powers over which the wisest man 



Lessons of the Drought. 1 1 1 



is powerless as a worm, — to think of these and not 
to have any confidence or belief in a power supe- 
rior to these pitiless forces, not to have an inspiring 
faith that the land was made for human habita- 
tions and experience, and is sheltered by a cease- 
less love from the hunger of the elements ! Why, 
I could as easily conceive of a person making his 
home unconcerned in an uncaged menagerie as 
of a man at rest in nature, seeing what it is, and 
not feeling that it is embosomed in God ! Go to 
nature, my brother ; go to the unroofed universe ; 
go to the awful pages of science, not to learn 
your religion, but to learn your need of it, — to 
learn that you are houseless without the sense of 
God as overarching you by his power, pledging 
his care to you, twisting the furious forces of immen- 
sity into a protecting tent for your spirit's home. 

Think of the fact which these weeks of drought 
suggest to us, that four months of steady sunshine 
would ruin this nation, yes, dry up the best civili- 
zation on the globe. Four months of uninter- 
rupted summer sunlight — -that which is God's 
chief bounty, that which is the most glorious 
symbol of his purity and love, would be as great 
a curse as could befall the nations which live in 
the temperate climes. It would breed general 
famine ; it would sweep away the cunning and 
wisdom of the world. So dependent are we on 
alternations of God's benefits ! so needful is the 
assurance which religious faith alone can give, 
that the pendulum of nature will not pause at the 



112 Lessons of the Drought. 



extremity of its arc, but swing back in season to 
save the earth from utter desolation and death ! 
The drought that has been visited upon this 
country has extended over the greater portion 
of it, but it has not visited the paraliel climates 
of the other hemisphere. 

The enormous masses of vapor which on those 
hot, cloudless days were drawn into the upper air 
were carried by the west-winds across the ocean. 
England, France, Germany, and Spain have been 
largely supplied, most bounteously blessed, with 
rain and the rich promises of harvest. The 
atmospheric exchange has been greatly in favor 
of Europe. So that we see the world is one. 
Providence is not wholly forgetful of his children 
even in seeming calamities. Looking more deeply 
into the scantiness of water, we are led to the laws 
that overs weep the ocean, and bind both con- 
tinents into unity of life in the regard of heaven. 
It was expected that we should be called upon to 
feed the European peoples with our corn more 
largely than before, because of their absorption in 
war. We have supplied them, but it is with our 
water itself, the raw material of grain, not with 
the distilled and ripened product. We have sent 
it to them, not in solid clippers, but noiselessly, in 
cloud ships, and poured it directly, unhampered 
by corn-laws, upon their fields. It is calculated 
that our loss in this country by the recent dryness 
' will be nearly or quite two hundred millions of 
dollars, evaporated by the sun, — three millions 



Lessons of the Drought. 1 1 3 

a day lapped up into its golden light. It would 
be a most profitable investment if the loss of it 
could only teach our whole people the mystery of 
nature, lead them to a devout recognition of God, 
ennoble their lives by insight into the beneficent 
plan in which their being is embosomed, and 
strike away from their minds those mechanical 
and atheistic habits of thought which rob the 
world of its poetry, and so hide from us the splen- 
dors of the Infinite, and rob us of the comfort of 
conscious dependence upon God. We paid more 
than two hundred millions for the war with Mex- 
ico, and the purse of the Republic felt the drain 
but slightly. And if the anxiety with which the 
farmers of the country have looked into the sky 
for two months past, the prayers they have offered 
in heart for rain, the sadness with which they have 
seen the corn wither and the grass grow sallow, 
could all be put to the account of religion, could 
deepen permanently the sense of dependence, and 
ingrain the habit of reference to God, so that 
henceforth showers should seem to be poured 
from his urns, and the alternations of sun and 
cloud be felt as his handiwork, and full harvests 
acknowledged as his bounty, the conscience, heart, 
and character of the land would be raised to such 
a degree that the millions lost for it would be un- 
worthy of a thought in comparison with the new 
and nobler prosperity that would be showered 
upon the country. The drought would be laden 
with rivers of spiritual mercy. 

H 



114 Lessons of the Drought. 



The drought, too, suggests vividly at this time 
one of those poetic truths of nature which offer 
themselves as the richest symbols of religion. 
We live upon the rain. We eat and drink in 
one form or another the juices that drop from 
the clouds. Animal life is fed from the clover, 
grass, and hay in which the rain and dew are 
transmuted ; and we feed upon the vegetables at 
the second remove, and upon the animals at the 
third remove, from the water of the showers and 
the storms. The Greek mythology has a picture 
of the Goddess of Beauty as born miraculously 
from the foam of the sea. This is only a feeble 
statement of the scientific fact that all natural 
beauty, all the verdure of meadows, all the fo- 
liaged stateliness of trees, all the glory of blos- 
soms and flowers, rise out of the sea, — are trans- 
formations of the moisture which the deep gives 
to the air. The book of Job asks the sublime 
question, " Hath the rain a father ? " Modern 
science answers yes, it is the daughter of the sun 
and the ocean, and it is the soul — almost soul 
and substance — of all that clothes the earth and 
feeds its countless multitudes. O the rich mys- 
tery of the simple, tasteless rain! Drawn out of 
the salt reservoirs of the deep, and transmitted 
into a thousand liquors — a miracle at every step 
— for the food of man ! If God should drop our 
bread and meat, our rice and flour and fruits, 
every day into our homes by a myriad miracles, 
how solemnly would the fact touch our religious 



Lessons of the Drought. 115 



sensibilities, how devout we should all be, how 
deep our feeling of dependence, how close would 
the Eternal Presence seem ! But how is it 
now? Is the fact any less wonderful? Is not 
greater beauty, a more radiant and more various 
mystery added to it by the present arrangement 
of Providence ? Is any chemist wise enough to 
tell how it is that this simple rain-water drawn 
fresh by the sunbeams out of saltness is turned, 
in the same field, by passing through different 
stalks and trunks, into apple-juice and pear- 
flavor, peach-blood and plum-pulp, — the liquid 
life of the nectarine, the strawberry the grape, 
and the melon ? Can he explain how the lemon 
gets its acid from it and the sugar-cane its sweet ? 
how it yields such full and luscious juices to the 
orange and such substance to the banana ? how it 
gives its milk to the cocoa-nut, and to the pine- 
apple its refreshing savor? All these, yes, and 
all the grains and fruits of the earth, grow out of 
the bitter sea. They come to us from the sea by 
the way of the clouds. Their common life drops 
from heaven as if to tell us that it is by heavenly 
bounty, as if to make us look up, — look up 
before we are bewildered by the subtle and en- 
trancing miracles through which God delights our 
lips with it at last. And how few of all that are 
thus nursed by the clouds think at all of the cir- 
cuit of the waters from the heaving brine to 
the vapors in heaven, and thence through the 
vines and orchard to the tables of men ? How 



n6 Lessons of the Drought. 

many of us are wondering if God really cares 
for us ; how many of us are uncertain whether 
there is an Infinite Providence, and are longing 
for some striking and startling evidence of his 
care ! " O for a miracle, — to see but one ! " per- 
haps we say. 

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily 
bread," this is what we pray for: "O Infinite 
Lord, continue to us, as heretofore, the order of 
the seasons, the balance of the forces that belt 
the world. Remove not thy control, spare not 
thy care, for we are dependent on thy watchful- 
ness and mercy for the harvest which drops to us 
directly as the manna of the Israelites out of the 
sky." The sunshine is the wand which, waved 
over nature when the clouds have broken, calls 
out the countless bounties of the earth. If the 
rain is withheld it curses the soil and is the great 
destroyer. Such subtle fitness was there in the 
passage wherein Jesus linked them together in his 
sermon, — " For he causeth his sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and on the unjust." 

Do not think that this is mere abstract religious 
truth, without practical import and power. Is it 
nothing, is it a trifle, to look upon nature with 
purged and penetrative eyes, to catch its meaning 
in the pure depths of a Christian heart, to live in 
it as Christ did, and see that it is full of whispers 
of the Highest, and that all its processes are sym- 
bols of God's spiritual approach to us and com- 



Lessons of the Drought. 1 1 7 



munion with us ? I do not believe there is any 
possibility of a constant and rich religious life un- 
til we feel that nature is quick with God, its laws 
his method, its forces his will, the light his favor, 
the rains his bounty, all natural beauty his smile, 
droughts and blights still the hidings of his good- 
ness, and the interblended friendship of the forces 
of the universe the architecture of his provident 
wisdom, that man may have a home. 

Not only by inviting our thought to the secrets 
of natural order does the dry season offer to stim- 
ulate the religious sentiment, but it gives us some 
new language, some important symbols for stating 
some of the important spiritual laws of life. The 
hot sunshine, withering the fields by its incessant 
floods, tells us anew that unmixed blessings in the 
soul's world are usually evils. Sunlight is the em- 
blem of prosperity ; darkness and clouds of ad- 
versity and trial. And in how many men has the 
religious life shrunk and dried because of unin- 
terrupted fortune and plenty ! Sufferers are drawn 
toward God ; afflicted hearts feel the Infinite Pres- 
ence j from cold and cloudy circumstances aspi- 
rations, prayers, and blessings go up to the Lord 
of love. Probably from every other condition of 
life, more religious recognition and service rises to 
the Father than from full and never-failing plenty 
and days of constant cheer. Not without insight 
did the writer of the book of Job say, " In pros- 
perity the destroyer shall come," nor the author 
of the Proverbs declare, " The prosperity of fools 



1 1 8 Lessons of tlie Drought. 

shall destroy them." The sunshine must alternate 
with cloud and shower before fragrance can be 
shed from the blossoms of the heart. Perhaps as 
the angels look upon some men who have never 
known any form of adversity, they see and say 
that there is too much sunshine on their souls, 
they are suffering for want of suffering, they are 
parching into worldlings because no clouds roll 
up into their sky, which are the most blessed cre- 
ations of the sun, and which veil the heavens for 
a season from our eyes, that they may open them 
continually to our hearts. What depth of truth 
in the old utterance of the Bible, " But now 
men see not the bright light that is within the 
cloud." 

Again, we see the spiritual truth that most good 
is done to us in our days of discipline, stated in 
the fact that the days of drought are really the 
days of supply. The sun is drawing water then ; 
storing the upper treasure-houses, preparing for 
future rains and harvests. So the hot sorrows of 
the world, those which make the deepest draught 
on the great ocean of tears, fill the air of general 
sentiment with generous vitality, spot it with soft 
and benignant clouds, and robe our life with its 
sweetest verdure evoked by the soft streams of 
pity and sympathy. Follow out the threads of 
the best blessings of society, those feelings and 
facts that make us something more than traders 
and pleasure-seekers, and we are led soon to the 
woes and the mysteries of experience. 



Lessons of the Drought. 



119 



Bat, lastly, the sadness which this material dry- 
ness spreads over the face of nature suggests the 
features of a spiritual drought, from which, per- 
haps, we shall not be relieved so easily as from the 
outward one. The moral world is the chief vine- 
yard of God, and alas, how little bloom, as yet, 
in history, has his eye seen upon it ! All the 
mournful aspects which the grain and grass fields 
of the North and West now show to the human 
eye, — blight, dryness, dust, and dearth, — the 
spiritual acres unfold nearly all the time to the 
Eternal view. Sin is blight. Not one feature, 
influence, or product of it can be stated or illus- 
trated by anything lovely and promising in nature. 
It is canker, mildew, rot, worm, fever, sand, bar- 
renness, desolation. Every item of the dreary 
picture of natural suffering on the farms of our 
land is paralleled on a higher plane in the condi- 
tion of souls that are destitute of heavenly rain. 
The grace of God, the visits and presence of his 
spirit, are presented in the Bible as dew and 
showers, large measures of the early and latter 
rain. Just as the trees have no inward vitality save 
what they absorb from the moist legacies of the 
sky, we have none save what comes to us from the 
Infinite grace and life. Think of an irreligious, 
an atheistic tree or vine ! One that should refuse 
to receive the dew and showers into its fibres ; 
refuse to clothe itself with leaves, and distil juices 
within its bark, and fulfil its call to service by feed- 
ing and ripening its fruit ! You cannot conceive 



120 Lessons of the Drought. 

such a thing. If you could, you cannot conceive 
that a farmer would keep it on his land. An ap- 
ple-tree that should deliberately store its twigs 
with bitter and poisonous balls, a grape-vine that 
should fill its clusters with ashes and dust ! He 
would cut it down and burn it as a lump of veg- 
etable iniquity, as more than a cumberer of the 
ground. 

But with ourselves how is it ? Why is God so 
patient with his world ? Why so patient with us ? 
Is it because of the service we render him ? Is it 
because of the joy he finds in our spiritual verdure 
and beauty ? We are set, like the vines and plants 
of the material soil, to receive the simple and com- 
mon bounty of his grace from the sky, and work 
it over, each into peculiar virtues to enrich his 
treasury according to our inward nature and our 
circumstances, with a new flavor of goodness, — 
one nation, one climate of the church to be trop- 
ical and another temperate in the product of vir- 
tue. But we do not our work so well as the trees. 
They shrink and wither only when God withholds 
their moisture. We are barren because we will 
not take and fill our veins with his grace. We 
show the landscape of drought while there is 
plenty of rain and dew. God never leaves us with- 
out spiritual nutriment, — food for our reverence 
and faith, and sweet sentiments and blessed char- 
ities. And he keeps us in his vineyard while we 
do not adorn it ; he is patient with us in the pa- 
rental hope that we shall yet revive, and blossom 



Lessons of tlie DrougJit. 121 



like the rose to his praise and joy. Let his good- 
ness inspire us anew. Let us come closer to his 
spirit. Let us open our hearts to him, and blos- 
som in his service. Let us strive to fulfil the 
sweet assurance of the prophet : " Blessed is the 
man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope 
the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by 
the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by 
the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, 
but her leaf shall be green ; and shall not be care- 
ful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from 
yielding fruit." 

1854. 



6 



122 The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 



VIII. 

THE CHRISTIAN AND THE HEATHEN DOLLAR. 

" And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, 
Whose is this image and superscription ? " — Matthew xxii. 19, 20. 

IN the light of the religion of Jesus, everything 
belonging to the circle of our life must 
be classed either as Christian or heathen. If 
we do not live any differently, or try to live any 
differently, under the instructions and privileges 
of Christian truth, from the way men lived before 
Christ came into the world, then we are essen- 
tially heathen, and our proper place is back in the 
centuries that preceded Jesus, or off in the coun- 
tries that lie beyond the light of his religion. Every 
person whose goodness does not wear some hue, 
and is not vital with some element, which Jesus 
shed into society, — whose virtue is the gift of a 
happy temperament and good natural dispositions 
alone, and does not include the spirit of consecra- 
tion and sacrifice, filial reverence and brotherly 
charity, — has a heathen character. I do not say 
that it is a base, a depraved, a thoroughly repul- 
sive character to men, or even to God ; perhaps 
the term good may fairly be applied to it ; but it 



The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 123 



is no better than character might have been in 
Rome or Ephesus before Christ sanctified our 
earth. It does not partake of the spirit which 
distinguishes our religion from the dull twilight of 
antique civilization. It does not rise above the 
level or possibilities of heathenism. 

The church has generally divided men into two 
classes, — depraved and regenerate. This distri- 
bution is harsh ; and it is untrue, for there are 
thousands of characters whom we cannot call re- 
generate, that it would be still more false to call 
depraved. But we may fairly run a dividing line 
across the moral world that shall separate people 
into heathen and Christian, according as they act, 
or endeavor to act, from the inspiration of Christ's 
religion, or as they follow the untrained impulses 
of their own constitution. 

The old heathen empires have crumbled to dust. 
But if a state to-day does not recognize the su- 
premacy of God, and the infinite worth of man in 
its objects and its laws, it is a heathen state. The 
only way in which it can be a Christian nation is 
by seeking the good of its citizens through its 
statutes and its administrations. If it aims to 
guard, establish, and extend peace and freedom, 
education, happiness, and order among the mil- 
lions ; if power is held and exercised as a trust, 
so that year by year the people grow wiser, hap- 
pier, and better on account of the government 
they live under, the state is Christian ; otherwise 
it is heathen. The titles of most of the despotic 



1 24 The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 

monarchs of Europe, I believe, include the phrase, 
" Most Christian Majesty." But to judge by the 
spirit, objects, and result of their government, 
the robberies, oppressions, armies, and ignorance 
that compress the people into a groaning pedestal 
of a selfish aristocracy and a tyrannous throne, the 
accurate title would be, " His Most Heathen Maj- 
esty," the Czar of Russia, or Emperor of Austria, 
or King of Naples. 

So in regard to the home. It is Christian in 
every case where something higher than a worldly 
spirit, or constitutional cheerfulness of temper, or 
simple refinement of intellect and taste, presides 
in it. It is sad that in the eighteenth century 
after Christ entered the homes of Cana and Beth- 
any there should be any question as to what is 
the spirit of the homes in Christian lands. Sad 
enough that the privileges intrusted to parents for 
intermingling the spirit of reverence, faith, and 
prayer, the heart of charity, and the serious view 
of life as a trust, with the very structure of the 
conscience and the mind, should be so widely neg- 
lected, so that out of the myriad of houses which 
might all pour out a rill of Christian life into the 
stream of society, only here and there one can be 
called a Christian home, a young church, which 
the spirit of Jesus secretly hallows • but most of 
them are little above the homes of Corinth or of 
Athens in the influence they exert for the redemp- 
tion of the soul. 

The same distinction runs into the world of 



The Christian and the Heatlien Dollar. 125 

trade. A merchant is either heathen or Chris- 
tian. Where honor underlies the counting-room, 
and the warehouse is built on the rock of integ- 
rity, so that floods and storms cannot wash it 
away ; where the trader or the broker feels that 
unspotted character is worth more than all money 
which stains or shadows reputation, and that any 
fortune would be gained at a desperate bargain 
that turned upon a falsehood or a trick, there is a 
Christian merchant, there is a mercantile struc- 
ture that stands out in the light of Christian civil- 
ization, and belongs to the landscape of Christ's 
church as much as the spire of the meeting-house, 
or the intricate beauty of the cathedral dome. 
But where gain is the object, and selfishness is the 
law, of the office, the factory, or the store, and the 
man hesitates at nothing which is safe that will 
increase his profit line, and bends his soul to the 
very lowest customs and artifices that will allow 
him to remain in the arena of traffic, the man is 
a heathen merchant, and belongs, with all his es- 
tates, among the pagans of ancient Sidon and the 
corrupt traders of Tyre. 

The incident in the text leads us to apply the 
same distinction to money. Jesus took a coin in 
his hand and asked, "Whose image and super- 
scription is this?" It was a Roman coin. The 
head and the name of the emperor were stamped 
upon it. It was the money through which the Jews 
in Palestine paid tribute to the power of Rome. Its 
currency showed that the Hebrews were a subject 



1 26 The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 

people ; and there was a phrase with the Phari- 
sees running thus : " Wheresoever the money of 
any king is current there the inhabitants acknowl- 
edge that king for their lord." All this is sym- 
bolic of spiritual meanings. A dollar may be 
Christian or may be heathen. The coins we use 
in our daily traffic are of different metal, and are 
differently stamped with mottoes and devices, ac- 
cording to the country from which they come. 
Some of them show the pillars that represent the 
government and power of Spain. Some of them 
bear the eagle of Mexico. Now and then we have 
a gold one beautiful with the insignia of France. 
The English sovereign wears the likeness of the 
imperial queen, and our own dimes and dollars 
and eagles show to the eye the countenance of 
Liberty, and the royal bird whose extended wings 
are symbolic of the two oceans that stretch out 
from the body of our continental territory. 

But besides these visible pictures which the die 
impresses upon the metal, all our money has a 
moral stamp. It is coined over again in an in- 
ward mint. The uses we put it to, the spirit in 
which we spend it, give it a character which is 
plainly perceptible to the eye of God, — a char- 
acter as clear as if it were written on it in human 
language. All our dollars, beyond those spent for 
the primal necessities of existence, of course are 
expended at the bidding of certain tastes and 
loves, and the proportion of our spending for the 
luxuries of life betrays the dominating forces of 



The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 127 



our character, and so infuses a representative 
quality into the coin. 

Money is a great implement for affecting society 
and our own spiritual welfare. The controversy 
which Christ has with the world concerning the 
use of money is, not that so much is used for ma- 
terial objects and needs, not that so much is spent 
for the refinements, the graces, and the elegant 
pleasures of society, but that of the vast millions 
that are spent every year for purposes beyond the 
bodily and family wants, such a very slight pro- 
portion is consecrated to beneficent, generous, 
merciful, holy purposes. It is that so few of our 
guineas and eagles are coined over at the Divine 
treasury, and bear witness to our consecration to 
the cause of truth, the will of God, and the good 
of man. This is the great probe-question for all 
persons that are not positively poor, at any rate 
for every wealthy man, What proportion of your 
surplus income do you devote to the doing of 
good, to the help of religion and humanity? If 
your yearly list of expenses should be inspected 
in heaven, what report would it bear as to your 
reverence, your faith, your charity ? How much of 
the silver tide that is steadily flowing from your 
treasury quickens the good causes of the world, 
helps the race, and makes the heavens rejoice? 
In a word, how many Christian dollars have 
dropped from your hands out of the hundreds 
that you have scattered ? A man of means has 
the right to use money for the gratification of del- 



128 TJie Christian a7id the HeatJien Dollar. 



icate tastes, and for the purchase of refined pleas- 
ures. It is well that, in a community like ours, 
money should be held ready to procure the enjoy- 
ment of travelling, to deepen the love of nature, 
or to purchase books and pictures that will charm 
the eye and adorn the home, or to listen to lec- 
tures and concerts that will bring the soul into 
communion with the best eloquence and music of 
the time, or to increase the pleasure and multiply 
the bonds of graceful social intercourse. But so 
long as man is a religious being it is not right, it 
is a crying sin, that we should be so unfaithful 
with our purses to the highest of all claims upon 
our gold, and that, as soon as we rise above the 
calls for food, clothing, and shelter, we calcu- 
late how much we can spare for selfish enjoy- 
ments, and never take into account the duty of 
apportioning some of our means to the highest 
calls, so that our contributions for God's purposes 
shall bear their proper ratio to what we freely give 
for our own gratification and joy. The Almighty 
made us religious beings as well as artistic beings ; 
he has given us a conscience as well as an ear for 
music, a heart bound in with the fortunes of hu- 
manity as well as a taste for melody and beauty. 
The man that always seems to have a dollar or 
two, or even five dollars, ready for a concert that 
offers an attractive bill, and always feels poor as 
soon as a good object is proposed which seeks his 
contribution, who curtails on charities to be lib- 
eral on pleasures, — such a man sins ; he corrupts 



The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 1 29 



the coin of the world ; he swells the number of 
selfish and heathen dollars in society ; he is faith- 
less to his duty and privilege of coining over some 
of the wealth that is given to him into Christian 
silver. Alas, how many such men there are among 
us ! They seem to have the purse of Fortunatus, 
inexhaustible, so long as opportunities invite them 
to feed their elegant appetites • the bank has 
money in abundance for pictures and pleasures, 
fine dresses and sight-seeing, beautiful books and 
operas and travel ; but when a case of distress is 
mentioned, or a large demand for some good in- 
stitution presents itself, or a Christian subscription- 
paper alights upon their desks, they are so poor. 
How suddenly their circumstances have changed ; 
they feel compelled by conscience to retrench their 
expenses ; business has not been so good of late ; 
if their good wishes will help you, you can go away 
strengthened from their presence, otherwise your 
call is wasted time. 

Again, then, we say that it is the duty of every 
man with any means to observe proportion in his 
surplus expenses ; to have a conscientious order 
with regard to the service which his superfluous 
dollars discharge. Over against every prominent 
allowance for a personal luxury, the celestial rec- 
ord-book ought to show some entry in favor of the 
cause of goodness and suffering humanity ; for 
every guinea that goes into a theatre, a museum, 
an athenaeum, or the treasury of a music hall, there 
ought to be some twin-guinea pledged for a truth, 
6* 1 



1 30 The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 

or flying on some errand of mercy in a city so 
crowded with misery as this. Then we have a 
right to our amusements and our graceful pleas- 
ures. Otherwise we have no right to them, but 
are liable every moment to impeachment in the 
court of righteousness and charity for our treach- 
ery to heaven and our race. 

I love to think sometimes of what goes on in 
the mint, where our country's currency is struck, 
during the course of a year. A stream of virgin 
silver and gold is flowing into its doors, steadily, 
every day. From California and Mexico and 
Peru and Russia and Australia, perhaps, it finds 
its way there through the pipes of commerce, — 
innocent metal, valueless in itself, fresh from the 
treasury of the earth, whence it was arrested by 
the enterprise and toil of human hands. And 
there it is purified, smelted, strengthened by 
alloy, and prepared for the die, and re-born into 
beautiful coin. All of it receives the impress of 
our country's emblems. The image and super- 
scription of Caesar, the State, are stamped upon it. 
But, from the moment when it goes forth into the 
world, it ceases to be merely political coin, it will 
not serve the necessities of commerce alone. How 
might a man moralize over a large heap of those 
beautiful gold drops before they go to have their 
purity soiled by the rough usage of human hands. 
How many of you, he might say, are going to be 
the currency of selfishness, to be coined over by 
the chill spirit of avarice, and to have the symbol 



The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 131 



which the mint has left upon you effaced by the 
figure of Mammon, and the miserly mottoes that 
will be graved upon you when you become the 
instruments and objects of selfish greed? Some 
of them, the prophetic eye might see, were going 
to be spent for intemperate indulgence, to be 
offered on the altar of Bacchus, and so morally 
to be recoined with his reeling figure bloated upon 
it, and that awful text from his gospel, " Let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Others, it 
might be seen, were on their way to the hot prizes 
of the gaming-table, the innermost sanctuary of 
the pit, where feverish eyes should be fastened 
upon them and desperate hearts stake their last 
treasure for them, and where they seem almost 
visibly to gleam with the fiery portrait of Satan, 
his chosen medallions, that burn every hand un- 
lucky enough to win. Others go to purchase 
learning and culture and the recorded thoughts 
of genius, and upon them the image and super- 
scription of Apollo and Minerva are outlined. 
Some, again, will wear the forms of the Graces or 
the Muses, inlaid into their substance by the 
human tastes that make them serve as minis- 
ters. If the eye could foresee what ones would 
go on missions of mercy, would strengthen the 
interests of truth, would put wings on good ideas, 
would endow beneficent institutions with newpower, 
would carry sympathy and help to the bed of some 
poor sufferer, kindle a fire upon the desolate 
hearth, spread a meal upon the table of destitu- 



132 The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 

tion, clothe a pallid and shivering child, or give it 
some training of mind or heart, — those, a man 
might say, are the Christian coins. It should seem 
that they ought to gleam more brightly among 
the heaps where they lie. The form of Christ is 
really stamped upon that silver and gold, and his 
superscription, " It is more blessed to give than to 
receive," enwreathes his image with immortal truth. 
Those are the dollars that look precious in the 
sight of heaven. The touch of benevolence trans- 
mutes them into eternal possessions. Who would 
not wish to own them ? Who, when the hour of 
death comes, would not prefer to have spent such 
coin ? What pleasure or profit would then look 
so bright, or give such comfort as the retrospect 
of these golden benefactors of the w T orld ! " Lay 
up for yourselves treasures in heaven," said Jesus. 
We cannot take the currency of this world there, 
but every dollar, every dime, we have spent, so 
that the picture of Christ has been stamped upon 
it, has become spiritual currency. Moth and rust 
cannot corrupt it ; it passed on the instant after 
our use of it upward as an eternal investment in 
the treasury of God. 

" Render unto Caesar the things which are Cae- 
sar's, and unto God the things which are God's." 
Some of our money belongs to Caesar, or this 
world ; but some of it also belongs to God, — be- 
longs to him just as some of our thoughts and 
our reverence and our heart's gratitude and wor- 
ship belong to him. It is theft, it is robbery 



The Christian a,7id the Heathen Dollar. 133 

to keep it back. Everything that may do good, 
which men hold in their possession, is a trust, — 
genius, influence, reputation, time, money, every- 
thing that may do good, is a trust, and if we with- 
hold it from doing good we violate a command- 
ment that reads, "Thou shalt not steal" ; we deny 
the truth which runs, " All souls are mine." The 
money which we spend is heathen, all of it, if 
some portion of it is not devoted gold. In some 
countries there are tithe-laws which set apart one 
tenth of all the income of the people for the sup- 
port of the Church. We have properly wiped 
those from our statute-books. But we shall never 
wipe out the supreme tithe-law written upon our 
conscience, justified by the fact that we are put 
into this world for service and under bonds of 
trust, which rightfully call for a portion of our 
income and substance for the service of God. 
Men deny more the doctrine of trust and feel less 
the duty of service in respect of money than of 
all other things. And if Christ could return to 
the earth now and sit in judgment upon us, and 
show us the way of duty, the consecration of 
money would be the great thing, I believe, which 
he would strive to impress upon us ; and if he 
could call us all before him with our coins, — all 
the coins that we have spent in our years of 
responsibility, — one of his most serious questions 
would be, as he inspected each of them, "Whose 
image and superscription is this ? " And as he saw 
them so generally stamped with the figures of 



1 34 The CJiristian and the Heathen Dollar. 

Pleasure and Mammon, he would ask in a tone 
that would search the secret places of our souls, 
" Where are those that have been rendered unto 
God by the good that they have clone in the 
world ? " 

If we have not considered our duties seriously 
enough in this matter, now is the time 'deliberately 
to accept them. There are a thousand ways in 
a city like this in which our coin may be pledged 
to the Almighty, and take the image and super- 
scription of Christ. The most important method 
I would speak of is direct and continuous inter- 
est, on the part of each family that has a compe- 
tence, in some destitute person or family, whose 
condition they can know, and around whom their 
care and sympathy may be a wall of protection. 
The season is upon us that suggests our duties to 
the needy. The suffering in Boston every winter 
is immense. But it might be greatly relieved, 
almost wholly so, if, in addition to the institutions 
that have organized Christ's love, each family that 
can afford to would seek out some one miserable 
chamber or desolate cellar, and do what it can to 
supply its inmates with work and food and cheer. 
And then what an immense spiritual benefit 
would result ! How much good would be done to 
our own characters, how much sweet peace breathed 
around our own hearts, from the consciousness of 
the heavenly benediction ! how much joy from the 
assurance that some of our dollars, commissioned 
on errands of mercy, were bearing the image and 
superscription of Christ ! 



The Christian and the Heathen Dollar. 135 



Or, again, we may consecrate some of our dol- 
lars to the most advantage by practical interest in 
organizations of benevolence, especially in that 
which was started last winter in this part of the 
city, and which this winter will stretch its network 
over the whole of Boston. It is not casual charity, 
emotional charity, but systematic and principled 
charity that we need for the help of our characters 
and the purity of our money. This is what the poor 
need also. And this they can have through this gen- 
erous and vigorous organization, if we will help that 
organization by contribution and sympathy. It will 
do incalculable good this winter among us, if we 
will determine that it shall, if we will replenish its 
treasury with Christian dollars, that will stand as a 
bulwark against the social heathenism that over- 
shadows the poor. 

Thanksgiving-time is nearing us, too, and we 
may consecrate some of our gold in the good old 
custom of substantial charity to the needy. Let 
us remember the poor that day, at least. Let us 
seek some family in straitened circumstances, and 
confess the law of brotherhood by spreading for 
them a full board, around which they may bless 
the good Providence for the bounties of the har- 
vest. Let not that beautiful custom die out of the 
New England heart. Let us consecrate some day 
of this week to such worship of charity by our 
hands. They are Christian dollars that kindle up 
the spirit of joy in chilled hearts, and carry the 
light of hope and courage into gloomy homes. 

1852. 



IX. 



THE DIVINE ESTIMATE OF DEATH. 

" For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live 
unto him." — Luke xx. 38, 

DURING the last few weeks my own thoughts 
have been more than usually engaged with 
the problem of death. September, according to 
my pastoral experience, seems to be a crisis- 
month, — the season when the great destroyer 
marks those who are to be called soon into his 
silent realm. From the beauty and peace of the 
summer, not overshadowed by the knowledge of a 
single death in the parish, scarcely disturbed by 
the tidings of any serious sickness in our families, 
I returned to the city to see the joys and hopes of 
many homes suddenly smitten; to witness the sor- 
row of those who watch the shadow swift travel- 
ling towards them, which, before long, must wrap 
their households and their hearts in gloom ; and 
to meet, with such consolations and prayers as 
Christian faith can offer and inspire, friends who 
are rent by the various forms of anguish with 
which death, in the various modes of its dispen- 
sation, wrings the soul. A mother taken suddenly, 



The Divine Estimate of Death, 137 



in perfect health and early womanhood, from 
a home pervaded with domestic peace and joy ; a 
father called away in the full strength of manhood 
from labors just ripening into large prosperity, 
and affections that were strewing his way with the 
sweetest flowers ; a bereaved wife, stunned by the 
tidings of a husband's sudden death by pestilence 
in a Southern city, just when a welcome was ready 
for his promised return ; the convulsive grasp of 
the hand, and a strong man's bitter tears, amid 
the throng on State Street, as he told me that he 
must soon part from a companion more precious 
to him than the light of the sun, and whose 
strength he had supposed the summer would re- 
vive. These are some of the experiences which, 
in two or three recent weeks, have concentrated 
the interest of my own mind and heart upon the 
mystery of death. 

And now again, this morning, our prayers have 
been asked and given for another sorrow. One 
who had worshipped here ever since this spacious 
house was consecrated has been lifted up, since 
we last met, to worship in the building of God, 
" the house not made with hands." After a long 
life, almost filled up to the measure of threescore 
years and ten, — a life blessed with ample meas- 
ures of domestic happiness, and yet tried with 
searching griefs ; a life of patient fidelity to se- 
cluded duties ; a life whose latest stages lay through 
physical distress from which hardly an hour was 
wholly free, but still hallowed by an uncomplain- 



138 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

ing religious resignation, ceased suddenly without 
a moment's warning, as quietly as a tired infant 
sinks to sleep. And to-day the aged, afflicted, 
lonely husband turns to God with the prayer of 
the solitary soul, and the bereaved family come 
with chilled hearts to seek the warmth and com- 
fort of the Infinite Love. 

Such are the ways in which one who observes 
the ordinary dispensations of providential trial, 
the common order of human suffering, is made 
to feel the heart's need of the highest faith, and to 
search for the goodness that ordains bereavement. 
Yes, and in addition to all these single and more 
private instances of sorrow, the whole community 
has been startled and shocked, as never before in 
recent years, by the terrible tragedy of the sea * 
Into more than a hundred homes how have the 
tidings of it penetrated as lightning, desolating 
hearts and withering forever the earthly possi- 
bilities of joy! Let us not dwell upon this. The 
words are profane that attempt to describe such 
sorrow. With a prayer for those who are smitten 
thus, called to meet a heavier woe than they who 
went down in the sea, let us leave them with God. 
How did that news go into our homes, breathing 
strange terror around the fireside ! How did it 
intrude on the exchange between the hearts of 
merchants and their schemes of gain ! How has 
it sent a thrill of horror over the whole conti- 
nent, interrupting in a thousand towns the earthly 

* The loss of the steamer Arctic. 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 139 

avocations with its message of death ! How 
deeply has it sunk into countless hearts, leading 
them to silent questionings of the ways of Provi- 
dence ! I know not how it has been with others, 
but with me every incident of that scene, gathered 
from various reporters, and individualizing its 
mighty woe, has been as a stab like that of a near 
personal loss \ and during these last few days I 
have been haunted by the vision of that proud 
steamer settling into the gray-curtained ocean, 
whose waves the skill of man had constructed 
her to trample with foaming wheels, and plunging 
into the salt Atlantic with her precious freight of 
hearts, whose thoughts of home and prayers to 
God were quenched in a moment in its deep, still 
solitudes. 

This picture has led all, no doubt, more or less 
to unusual interest in the questions of Providence. 
How shall we think of death ? In the light of 
what principles shall we look at its suddenness, 
its terrors, the inequalities of its dispensations, 
and the miseries it scatters so thickly in the path 
of those that are left behind ? Religion as a sys- 
tem of truth finds its highest expression, brings 
all its truths to a focus, as it were, in the view it 
reveals of death. And so any man's faith or want 
of faith, the quality of his faith or the degree 
of his scepticism, breaks out in the tone of his 
feeling concerning this greatest question that tries 
the human mind. How can it be benevolent 
in Providence so to desolate the earth? How 



140 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

can it be benevolent to blight so many blossoms 
of homes, in sweeping such crowds of the young 
by ruthless diseases into the grave ; to hurry away 
so many of the mature when their strength and 
ministry are so much needed • to snatch so many 
of the guilty without warning in their sin ; to 
close up the path of duty and pleasure before 
such multitudes to whom life was just opening 
full of promise, and whose stay here is essential 
to so many hearts ? How can God permit in his 
world such scenes as that which has recently har- 
rowed our bosoms, or look down complacently 
upon all those terrible wrecks which during the 
last few months have invested the ocean with such 
pitiless might ? Men would have saved those en- 
dangered lives if they could. Every resource of 
wealth and nautical skill would have been freely 
pledged, from a hundred ports along our coasts, 
to rescue the passengers of that pierced steamer, 
if her peril could have been prophesied. " Did 
Heaven look on, and would not take their part ? " 
Why are wars possible, and why must tens of 
thousands of dedicated men die seemingly for 
nothing? How shall we think of death, and 
make the dispensation of it harmonize with any 
faith in the goodness of the Almighty ? 

I will not pretend, brethren, that we can under- 
stand it wholly. In a world where we cannot 
comprehend anything fully, it would be strange if 
we could thoroughly understand the mission of 
death, and the beneficence of its ordering in the 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 141 

plan of Providence. But there are one or two 
great principles which we should keep in mind in 
connection with it, that, in my view, do relieve the 
most trying instances of it of much of their gloom. 
And it certainly is a great thing, a most desirable 
thing, to bring the exceptional cases — those in 
which its mystery presses the heaviest upon our 
sensibilities — into the general range of the diffi- 
culties that attend it ; to gain such a view of it 
that the extraordinary cases shall seem no more 
perplexing than the average ones, and will come 
easily under the general law. Many persons, I 
doubt not, whose faith is not tried much by the 
common messages of death that sunder human 
fellowships, and inflict sorrow upon hearts, are 
greatly disturbed by these unusual instances, by 
such awful accidents as the recent one. If they 
could get light on these exceptional cases, if they 
could feel that they are no more hard to under- 
stand than the ordinary ones, their minds and 
religious feelings would be greatly relieved. 

Of course, the highest light would be gained 
on the whole subject if we could know how God 
regards death ; what estimate he puts upon the 
continuance of our mortal years, and with what 
death is associated in his omniscient eye. I be- 
lieve we must settle down upon this principle, 
that God does not make any account of physical 
life in his government of the world. You may 
be startled at first by the statement, but it is true 
and sublime, and there is comfort in it. We ac- 



142 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

count our physical existence everything • we would 
give everything generally in exchange for it ; we 
cling to it with all our thoughts and with all our 
strength, as our chief possession ; we cannot see 
beyond it ; unless we have the clearest Christian 
faith, our plans spontaneously assume the fact that 
death is the end of everything desirable ; and so, 
to us, the greatest of mysteries is that by which 
the threads of life are hacked and snapped so 
lawlessly from the earthly loom. But with God 
this physical existence is a trifle. And why? Be- 
cause to him there is no death. He looks over 
that mist which is so thick before our vision, and 
he sees only life in his universe. To him there 
are no dear forms buried in the sea, no mothers im- 
prisoned in the tomb, no children hidden under the 
sod, no companions vanished into an all-surround- 
ing gloom, no soldiers blown from the cannon's 
mouth into non-existence, but a wide, illimitable 
sphere of light and vitality and blessed discipline. 
In the Infinite view there is not a cemetery in the 
universe, there is not a grave on any globe that 
gleams in the sky. For there is no cessation nor 
interruption of life caused by that which seems to 
us death. The body, as he looks upon it, is the 
spirit's garment only ; and however we are called 
to meet death, w r hether by slow disease or by water 
or by fire or by tempest, at the end of years or in 
youth or in the full powers of manhood, on the 
sick-bed or the battle-field, to his vision it is but 
the stripping off of a robe and the liberation of 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 143 

the clothed essence into higher forms of being. 
" He is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; 
for all live unto him." 

This is why the forces and arrangements of this 
world seem so unfriendly to human life ; this is 
why we are permitted to be at the mercy of the 
tornado and the pestilence, of changes of air, and 
the countless perils and accidents of sea and land, 
where no guilt can attach to those that are snatched 
away. This lower form of life, I believe, is of trifling 
consequence to the Infinite Spirit, because to him 
there is no death whatever, because to him that 
which seems death to us is less even than sleep, — 
a vanishing of the real person from one realm of 
life and a hastening into another and a higher one. 

O, if we could have for a moment a glimpse of 
the universe as God looks upon it! — one glowing, 
vivid, boundless field of life ; every death-chamber 
an anteroom of the infinite temple ; every death- 
hour a triumph-hour of entrance through an arch 
of shadow into eternal day • the whole earth ex- 
haling spirits into the upper heights of life, as the 
soil and the ocean send up their moisture in con- 
stant and invisible streams ; no more loss of souls 
than there is of drops when the briny ocean yields 
its fresh vapor to the touch of the warm sun, — 
if we could see this wondrous and magnificent 
process of life, of which seeming death is one of 
the dark agencies, although it might not dry our 
tears and subdue our grief, would it not lift off all 
the burden of mystery? Would it not, in our 



144 The Divine Estimate of Death. 



theories of the world, at least remove the gloom 
that settles so heavily over the sudden calls of 
those we loved, and the accidents that hurry 
crowds of our fellows beyond our mortal sight? 
And so, brethren, I believe it is our feeble vision 
and scepticism that darken life so with the mys- 
tery of death. Try to think of the world as God 
looks upon it, and the problem is illumined. We 
think very faintly of the future, while to God it is 
the great reality. Our thoughts gravitate around 
the tomb, which, in God's regard, is the point of 
ascension, and no more gloomy than that hill in 
Galilee from which Jesus floated up into heaven. 

Talk to me of this life, as so many Christians 
talk, as though it is a final state of probation, de- 
ciding our eternal state and destiny, and I cannot 
understand it. I cannot understand the unequal 
appointments of privilege ; the unequal provi- 
dences that summon souls away from it ; the ac- 
cidents and chances that hurry thousands, unpre- 
pared, into a terrible eternity, while others, more 
guilty, live on for repentance and the opportunity 
of salvation. Nay, I can understand so much of 
life as this, that in such a light it is a mighty mis- 
fortune and horror. But let me feel, by a thorough 
faith of mind and soul, that it is the first stage 
of endless existence, and that God sees it all- 
embraced with infinite light, with opportunities 
of infinite training and blessedness, swarming 
with beings whose bodies, broken by death, will 
shed an undying substance into a stable uni- 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 145 



verse, and however solemn the duties of life may 
be, and however serious the alienation from God 
in any heart must be, and however bitter the be- 
reavements which sudden death and fearful acci- 
dents ordain must be for those who lose the sweet 
companionship that blessed their earthly way, still 
the aspect of the w T orld is cheerful, and, rising by 
faith into that view which the Infinite Spirit takes 
of this existence, I can say it is all-glorious and 
inspiring, since neither tribulation nor distress 
nor persecution nor famine nor nakedness nor 
peril nor the sword can separate us from the love 
of God and his great boon of life. 

The public belief of our day does injustice to the 
spirit of Christianity in the view it inspires of 
death, investing it with a cheerless, chilly solem- 
nity that is pagan in its influence, making men 
cling with tighter tenacity to this world, as though 
it contains, and is, our chief good. Something 
awful is suggested as lying just the other side of 
its shadow, fearful even to the saint, while God's 
hungry laws are portrayed lying couched, — fierce, 
tiger-like, — to spring upon every unsanctified 
spirit as it emerges from the grim gateway of the 
grave. 

Brethren, the solemnity of religion attaches to 
character, not to death. States of soul are solemn 
things. The question what principles rule you is a 
solemn question. But death, the disrobing of the 
flesh, is not peculiarly so, — not any more so than 
all life is, not any more than any crisis-season of life 
7 J 



146 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

is which shows you what you are, and makes you 
taste the quality and sediment of your disposition 
and love. God is as just and good beyond the grave 
as here. If you are not afraid of him here, there is 
no reason why you should fear him there. He rules 
you, rewards or punishes you, in the deeps of your 
soul now just as he will there. You are in his 
presence every moment. His government is a 
spiritual, not a mechanical one. He has no visi- 
ble judgment-seat. If you are not afraid to go 
to sleep under the guard of his still starlight, and 
to wake in the morning in his lighted world of 
matter, — to wake with the same character you 
had when you slept, — you ought not to be afraid 
to wake in the luminous world of spirit into which 
we rise after the quick unconsciousness of death. 
It is God's love you rise into. You yourself are 
the only thing to be afraid of. Sin is all you 
ought to fear. And the coarse eloquence that 
invests death with such lurid terror degrades the 
real importance of all life, turns off the fear of 
the soul from where it should always rest, and 
makes punishment seem worse than evil. It is 
just as bad for you, and just as sad a thing, just 
as dangerous, to retire to-night with a mean, selfish, 
unchristian disposition and rise to-morrow with 
it, as it is to walk into the shadow of the grave 
with it, and take it into the full splendors of eter- 
nity. It is the Infinite love you deny or discard 
in both cases, — the love that would do everything 
for you, if you would open your heart. Sin is 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 147 



gloomy. Death itself is cheerful. It has the 
sublimest relations. It opens the way for sinner 
and saint into the morning, into new opportuni- 
ties of service and worship, into new discipline, 
into just as much joy as the state of the heart will 
permit and can receive. If you care for life at 
all, you should contemplate death with triumph. 

You will observe that I have called attention 
to this principle, the view which God takes of 
death, in order to show that, as he looks upon 
the universe, all apparent death is the same thing, 
in whatever form it may come, and thus, that the 
great accidents, the extraordinary incidents, are 
no more mysterious to him than the common 
ones ; since, so far as those that seem to die are 
concerned, the whole experience is nothing but a 
lifting up of souls to an intenser life. At every 
moment all the spirits that ever have been on 
this globe and all other globes are living unto 
him. " Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death," 
— put it away, annihilated it, — has an object 
of thought that is the standpoint from which 
as Christians we are to regard the world. The 
real mystery of death in its relations to Provi- 
dence is thus reduced to the sufferings of those 
that depart and of the friends that remain. If 
all those who perished physically on board the 
Arctic had died singly, at different times in the 
course of the next year, or month, in their homes, 
by ordinary disease, surrounded by their friends, 
no person's faith perhaps would have been strongly 



148 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

tried by contemplating the account of loss and 
suffering, item by item. It would not have 
strained the faith in Providence, in the average 
of religious men, very hard. But when all are 
brought together in one picture and in one mo- 
ment, and the whole agony of that hour is associ- 
ated with the anguish of friends that hear the 
tidings, our religious convictions are assailed as 
by a battering-ram. And yet, for those who died 
in the sea the physical suffering may not have 
been so great as the ordinary diseases that extin- 
guish life would have caused ; doubtless it was 
not so great as some of them endured who were 
saved from the catastrophe. And so far as each 
person that was taken is concerned, the death in 
God's sight was a gain. As each one of them 
went into the higher domain of life, the exchange 
of modes of existence was seen and felt to be a 
blessing. We must not therefore judge of Provi- 
dence by the imperfections of our mental capaci- 
ties in appreciating the facts of his government. 
Our bodies are but the boats of the spirit, in 
which it sails on the sea of matter ; and if our 
faith is not startled much when they plunge singly 
into the deep, leaving the spirit that was buoyed 
in them alone with God, ought our faith to be 
startled any more because we see scores of them 
go down together, leaving scores of their immor- 
tal pilots free to enter together the ethereal 
sphere ? If we could see, in one moment, all the 
deaths that take place to-day, and all the sorrow 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 149 

that attends them, it would wring our sympathies 
most fearfully ; but would it alter the fact that 
death is the introduction to a higher life ? Would 
it dim in any way the splendor of the scene as 
God looks down upon it, or change the principles 
which we should feel to be applicable to each 
isolated instance of departure ? To God, seeing 
that his nature is perfect, there are none of the 
surprises, none of the shocks, none of the half- 
views, which shake us and wrench us and be- 
cloud us so. He looks over the whole field, over 
the whole plan of discipline, every moment; while 
we are lamenting over shattered hopes and terri- 
ble disasters with tortured sensibilities, the souls 
in his realm are rejoicing at the crowds of new- 
comers into the splendors of eternity. Our death- 
wails here are birth-songs there. 

And as to the suffering of the friends that are 
bereaved by losses, we can, I think, in the light 
of one or two principles, see more benevolence in 
it than the first shock would lead the soul to sus- 
pect. Here, again, we must take God's point of 
view, and not man's. It is plain that death is a 
necessity here ; that we cannot live in physical 
frames, on the globe, forever. It is equally plain, 
I think, that it is very much better that death 
should not come regularly, and sweep away only 
frames that are aged, and have nothing more to 
live for on earth. Who will doubt that there have 
been most purifying and blessed influences left 
upon souls by the death of those they loved, — by 



150 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

the removal of an infant, or a sweet child, or a 
revered father, a dear mother, a precious wife, 
an honored husband ? If everybody lived to a 
worn-out old age, if death were a calculable 
experience, there would be no hallowing sorrow \ 
there would be no interweaving of the spiritual 
world with this by the tenderest affection, as there 
is now through the casual strokes of the destroyer. 
If the earth is so sensual, selfish, sense-bound, 
and hard-hearted now, what would it be if there 
were none of those softening, humanizing, faith- 
inspiring ministries of sorrow ? 

And if God has this meaning in ordaining that 
no age or state shall be free from a call to a 
higher world, can we not see that he intends to 
teach us something by the frequent suddenness and 
unexpectedness of departure ; by the fortuities, 
so terrible to the senses, that often sweep hun- 
dreds, in a moment, beyond our sight? May it 
not be that he tries to teach us in this way some- 
thing of the frailty of life ; to impress it upon us, 
as it could not be done under any other order ? 
And does he not see, perhaps, that enough spirit- 
ual good is done by this outwardly sad feature of 
temporal discipline, to atone, and more than atone, 
for its apparent terror ? 

And if spiritual good is done by such a method, 
it is beneficent in God to maintain it. When your 
child cries for something which you know will in- 
jure it ; when it cries to sit up when you know its 
frame needs sleep ; when it insists on playing and 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 1 5 1 



being happy in its own way, when you know it 
must not have its own way ; when it is in bitter 
distress at some discipline which you know is for 
its good, — the world is dark to the child ; its whole 
universe is enrobed in sadness and mystery for a 
moment : but you think nothing of it ; it is all 
clear enough to you ; for you see that nothing 
could be so bad for the budding nature as to be 
happy for the moment, after its own caprice. 
From God's point of view it is the same, I believe, 
with his vast family. Whatever will increase, or 
contribute to increase, our spiritual qualities, is 
perfectly beneficent in his vision; and as he looks 
upon the moral universe, there is light in these 
sudden, terrible catastrophes of his providence, 
since those whom we speak of as dead are only 
lifted higher, and since the permission of such 
swift removals tends to the culture of faith and 
piety here. 

Another principle, too, although in a lower plane 
than those we have thus far treated, should be con- 
sidered in relation to such disasters as the recent 
loss of the ocean steamer. It is one of the plain 
facts in God's government of the world that no 
unusual providence of his will interfere to lessen 
the need of human wisdom and experience in 
mastering or in respecting the laws of nature. 
One of the great objects of human life plainly 
is to gain knowledge, and to act upon it, in regard 
to physical and settled laws. And God deliber- 
ately allows the greatest expense of mortal life in 



152 The Divine Estimate of Death. 

perfecting a great principle. How many lives are 
spent in purchasing an experience of medicines 
and a knowledge of the healing art and a perfec- 
tion of surgical skill ! Wherever we turn, we find 
wisdom built on death. God esteems physical 
life so slightly that he allows it to be squandered 
profusely in the purchase of wisdom, the comple- 
tion of science, the rebuke of negligence and reck- 
lessness, and the acquisition of a circumspect and 
wary skill. One of the lessons which the human 
intellect is now set to learn is the wisest and safest 
method of navigating the ocean in a fog. There 
is a wise way of doing it, and a safe way ; it lies 
within the power of the human mind to master it, 
and to act according to it ; and we may be sure that 
no providence will arrest a single law that threat- 
ens our ignorance, or avert a single calamity that 
punishes our neglect. The comparative safety of 
the sea now is due to triumphs of the human mind, 
stimulated by danger and disaster. In future ages, 
doubtless, the safety will be perfect through the 
service of such catastrophes as we deplore to-day. 

Brethren, it is a blessed thing to be lifted up 
above our own imperfect, partial vision to God's 
view of his universe. And the first thing for us 
to keep in mind, in our bewilderment before the 
mystery of death, is this : that God counts our 
physical life very cheap. Hundreds of millions 
of us he sweeps from the globe every century. 
Nothing seems more trifling, nothing of less con- 
sequence, in his regard than our mortal exist- 



The Divine Estimate of Death. 153 

ence. The organization of the dust, the structure 
of the rocks, are more precious to him than our 
physical fabric of body and soul, — they endure 
while we perish. Physical life is the cheapest 
thing, because the real life is indestructible and 
invaluable. The Infinite Spirit sees no death, 
and he has prepared a broad realm of discipline, 
education, worship, and joy, in the light of which 
all momentary bereavements are nothing more 
than little dots of darkness. Here is the value 
of the great doctrine of faith. It is taking a 
higher hand, — it is lifting ourselves above mortal 
limitations to catch the lighted sweep of vision 
that spreads out before a perfect mind. What 
privilege like this can be offered to human nature ? 
What other boon can be offered to it here that will 
give it such triumph — easy, joyous triumph — over 
the ills of life ? If I had been on that steamer, I do 
not know that I should not have been timid, ter- 
rified, smitten to the heart with doubt and cow- 
ardly dismay ; but if the principles that come to 
me in my best hours could have been there with 
me, I am sure that I should have had inward calm- 
ness. There might have been some instinctive 
physical recoil from the mode of death and the 
mystery of dissolution ; but I could have had no 
doubt as to God and his infinite goodness, and the 
immense personal gain of sinking away from all 
the beauty and love and fellowships of this world 
into the deeper ocean of his mercy, the glorious 
spaces of his spiritual day. 
7* 



1 54 The Divine Estimate of Death. 



We do not think enough of God • that is our 
infirmity, that is the bitterness of our distress. 
In such times as these, in all times of perplexity 
and sorrow, turn away from the earth and look up. 
Think of the Infinite Wisdom ; think of the Infi- 
nite Care ; think of the Infinite Love. God hears 
our sighs and counts our tears. If we could see 
his methods and fathom his plans, we should re- 
joice in disaster; we should rejoice in everything 
but sin, which is a turning away from him. Believe 
in immortality. Strive for more of that faith of 
Christ which sees that God is not a God of the 
dead, but of the living, since all live under him. 
Then shall we have the repose and peace of 
Christ. Then the suddenness of death darkening 
our homes will not break our trust, for we shall 
think of the light into which the departed rise. 
Then accidents shall not break our confidence. 
Then 

" Though the earth's foundations shake, 
And all the wheels of nature break, 
Our steadfast souls shall fear no more 
Than solid rocks when billows roar." 

1854. 



X. 



DISTRIBUTION OF SORROWS. 

" For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom he receiveth." — Hebrews xii. 6. 

WE often speak of the mystery or the prob- 
lem of suffering as connected with relig- 
ion. But the problem is not one simple question 
or difficulty. It has two parts. The first relates 
to the ordinance or permission of suffering ; the 
second relates to the apportionment or distribution 
of it. 

A great many persons are more prominently 
interested in the first inquiry. They ask the ques- 
tion in the general form, — Why was sorrow or- 
dained ? why was not everything made pleasant for 
the human race? why has death been allowed? 
whence the possibility of pain ? how can the long 
and frightful retinue of diseases be reconciled 
with a benevolent government of the world ? why 
are the hostilities of society permitted ? why was 
not life ordained to be an unruffled and delightful 
experience, guarded by genial forces, and com- 
pacted into joy ? 

Now, this general question is not so very diffi- 



156 Distri faction of Sorrows. 



cult to answer. We can gather, by thought, a 
broad stream of life to offset the general mass of 
shadow. Against the formula of suffering we can 
put a theory of life which, in a general way, will 
account for and justify the suffering. We can say 
that the world was made for the development of 
human nature, intellectually, morally, and spiritu- 
ally, — in reason, will, and the richest affections. 
We may say that the highest attributes possible to 
a finite nature cannot be directly created, but must 
be gained, wrought out, developed by strain and 
struggle. We may say that all forms of hardship 
which can have a noble effect on the mind and 
the character are justified by the appearance of 
the product wrought out through them. 

It would seem to be a great hardship to a lump 
of iron ore, if it were conscious, that it should 
have to be melted, separated from its accretions, 
beaten together into a lump or bar of pure metal, 
then heated again and cooled suddenly, — exposed 
in this way in quick succession to the most rapid 
and intense changes of temperature, and ham- 
mered furiously while these terrible processes are 
going on. "Why cannot I be left in peace/' it might 
say, "in my condition as ore ? I am contented with 
that form of life." Yet it is only by such processes 
that it can be promoted in quality from the slug- 
gish state of raw metal, compounded with alloy, 
to steel. And if it could be conscious, after it be- 
came steel, it would say: "Now I see the reason 
for these mines, with pickaxes, and transportations, 



Distribution of Sorrows. 157 



and great furnaces, and blasts of air to heat the 
coals white, and those baptisms of cold, those 
solid anvils, and frightful hammers. They were 
all beneficent. The frost and fire, the beatings 
and pain, are represented in the hardness and the 
edge, the gleam and the capacity, of my nature 
now. This nature I shall keep as long as I exist, 
and those hardships were only the processes of 
ascension into a condition infinitely superior to 
what, in the nature of things, I could have known 
in an undisturbed and contented lot." 

And this analogy, we say, can be used in the 
moral region. Finite natures can be created, we 
may say, only as ore ; to be promoted they 
must have difficulties. Hardships which they 
would never choose must be inflicted on them, or 
made necessary, as a portion of discipline. The 
great thing in education we may affirm is not to 
have so many facts told to a person and brought 
to his knowledge, but to get mental power; and 
therefore truth is made difficult of access, though 
attainable by intellectual toil. Energy, courage, 
persistence, valor of will, are better than the most 
luxurious enjoyment that can be showered upon a 
being; and these can be brought out only by 
conflict of some kind, as a muscle becomes 
tough and potent only by lifting, wrenching, 
blows, and toil. And therefore we are put under 
the lash of hunger, thirst, and cold. To be be- 
friended by Nature in all things would make a 
finite spirit immeasurably less noble than to gain 



158 Distribution of Sorrows. 



control of Nature ; and so we are set amid forces 
that are rude and rebellious, that we may gain 
the glory which comes from breaking and bridling 
them. Faith, and trust, and the pledging of our- 
selves to the Infinite will and love, are qualities 
that cannot be created in us by the Almighty as 
natural forces of our inward constitution ; they 
are the results of spiritual powers set in opposi- 
tion to hardship, perplexity, sorrow, and the sight 
of things seeming to drift wrong in the world of 
circumstances for a season. If they are worth 
anything as qualities, they imply the necessity of 
such conditions, just as the rainbow implies the 
background of cloud and shower. Physical pain, 
too, we may say, is an indispensable possibility if 
spirit is to be put to discipline in connection with 
matter ; and if a free spirit, or a soul to be edu- 
cated to freedom, and to be educated, also, as 
part of a great social organism, is put in connec- 
tion with matter, the manifold forms of pain and 
disease cannot be directly prevented by the Al- 
mighty without breaking up the whole structure 
of education and discipline. And as to the intru- 
sion of death into the world, we may say that, in 
the broad view of it, it is a sign of beneficence 
more than malignity, for it is the condition of 
life to myriads. If generations did not pass from 
the earth, it would soon be crowded, and the new 
tides of conscious life could not roll in to take its 
possibilities of training and enjoyment. 

Such is the general theory which can be set 



Distribution of Sorrows. 159 

over against the general impeachment of order 
and providence, based on the existence of hard- 
ship and trial. I do not pretend to say that, at 
all points, it is intellectually satisfactory. I do 
not pretend to say that I could support it logi- 
cally along its whole outline. I do not believe 
that there is an intellect on the globe competent 
to do that. There can be hardly anything more 
repulsive in the intellectual region than the claim 
of ability to solve perfectly the mystery of the 
appearance and permission of hardships and 
suffering. But I believe it may be fairly said 
that the theory we have stated accounts for as 
many or even more facts than does the theory 
which impeaches Providence. And if we can be 
made to broaden our view beyond the limits of 
this half-physical life, and take an unending ex- 
istence into the account, we shall find more and 
more light thrown upon sorrow by the theory that 
the world is made to develop great qualities of 
the intellectual and spiritual order, and that all 
troubles and sufferings are accounted for and vin- 
dicated which have visibly been the means and 
the condition of producing mental power, and 
moral or spiritual force, which ennoble forever 
the spirit in whom they are evoked. We can 
then intelligently say, "Whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth." 

We come to the more difficult question when 
we begin to ask about the distribution of suffer- 
ing. A great many people may say, We are quite 



160 Distribution of Sorrows. 

ready to grant the cogency of such a theory of the 
uses of hardship, when set against a theory that 
wonders why the world is not an Eden, and why 
all the good that we can dream of does not ripen 
for us, and come to us almost without bidding. 
If people were treated essentially alike, they will 
say, we should be content with the answer, we 
should say that it throws an inspiring light on life 
and its relations to the future. 

But, they urge, people are not treated alike. 
The moment we turn from the formula of suffer- 
ing to the facts of suffering, the moment we turn 
our eyes from the theory of the Divine beneficence 
in the permission of hardship to the manner in 
which hardships are apportioned in this world, we 
find a problem unspeakably complicated. The 
mystery grows darker. The theory serves to 
throw a heavier shadow, of itself, when taken in 
connection with the real life of men and women 
on the globe. If this world is for the training of 
character by hardship, if hardship is essential 
for its production, if the Creator estimates quali- 
ties which can only be obtained by resistance 
and struggle as the very highest ends of his 
providence, why are burdens so unequally ap- 
portioned ? Why are some thrown from birth 
into conditions that bring comparatively very lit- 
tle trial ? Why are the noble faculties of others 
so oppressed by the weight heaped upon them 
that they have scarcely a possibility of developing 
even a feeble vitality? Why are some ordained 



Distribution of Sorrows. 161 

to breathe an atmosphere of pollution from their 
infancy? Why are whole races placed in circum- 
stances a thousand times more favorable to the 
growth of admirable character than other races 
enjoy? When we come to particulars, it may 
be said, when you take the various strata and 
circles and varieties of individual lot within such 
a city as this into account, it does not seem as 
though human life can be set under any one 
theory that takes up and accounts for the prob- 
lem of suffering and evil in the light of a wise 
Providence, certainly not in the light of the 
theory which makes these sorrows an intelligent 
scheme for the development of spiritual good. 

And I at once confess that, in my view, many 
of the aspects of life, under this head of the 
problem, are insoluble. I do not believe that 
the theory has ever been thought out, or that the 
intellect has ever lived, which has thrown out or 
could give an explanation of the apportionment 
of sufferings that can stand the cross-questioning 
of an honest and thoughtful mind, determined to 
sift the question thoroughly. No man and no 
theory can satisfactorily tell us why an impartial 
God permits nations, ages of the world, whole 
districts of cities, different families of a near 
neighborhood, to be separated so widely by the 
amount they experience of the privileges of life ; 
why a holy God allows thousands and millions to 
grow up in an air that must be fatal to purity; 
why a just God can see myriads born and reared 

K 



1 62 Distribution of Sorrows. 

under the shadow of the most terrible injustice, 
from which other myriads are free ; why a sym- 
pathetic God can look with equanimity upon the 
pangs, the wretchedness, and the woe that, from 
no personal fault, sting and crush millions and 
tens of millions of natures here, and that would 
seem to make the music of the earth, as it rolls 
in its orbit, one vast inarticulate murmur of 
anguish. The man must be shallow in mind or 
cold in heart, he must be sadly deficient in hu- 
mility or in sensibility, who will maintain that the 
actual apportionment of suffering can be as easily 
explained as the theoretical value and beneficence 
of suffering, if it were equally distributed, can be 
justified. 

I do not mean by this, either, that we are 
driven to scepticism by the phenomena of the 
moral world. A sceptical theory of no Provi- 
dence, or of a God that is capricious or indifferent 
to human welfare, finds as many facts, certainly, 
opposed to it, as the more cheering scheme has 
to meet. What I affirm is that no theory sets all 
the facts in order. Faith must be an act of con- 
fidence, not a demonstration. It must be the 
choice of one side over another, where neither 
side can make a clear case to the understanding. 
Faith must be the acceptance of the nobler side, 
and the grounding of the life upon it, just as 
practical unbelief and the refusal of worship must 
be the choice of the darker side, and the ground- 
ing of life upon that. 



Distribution of Sorrows. 163 

But although no intellect is competent to con- 
struct a theory which will fully explain the un- 
equal distribution of hardship and suffering, there 
are one or two things to be said which, I think, 
do throw light upon some portions of that prob- 
lem. It is by taking a longer time into account, 
by making the conception of eternity a vital 
element in the question, by putting this life and a 
future life into as close connection as a course of 
training in a university and the career in active 
pursuit that is to follow, that we obtain our 
clearest light upon the purpose of hardship when 
the general problem is before the mind for treat- 
ment. 

Now, when the question is stated to me, or pro- 
poses itself to my own thought, thus : Here is a 
person who has no hardships of lot to encounter, 
no difficulties to wrestle with — everything in life 
goes as smoothly as floating down stream — how 
do you bring such an experience into harmony, 
under the same system, with the lot of another 
person or family, upon whom troubles are poured 
like hail, whose sky has more thunder in it than 
light and cheer, to whom the revelation of God 
is indeed in the picture of the Psalm, " Clouds 
and darkness are round about thee " ? — I say 
in answer, this : The crisis-season probably, in the 
history of the person with the easy lot, has not 
come. But, it may be said, it does not come even 
up to the hour of death. Then, I answer, it will 
come in the future life. I believe that, as to the 



164 Distribution of Sorrows. 

experience of hardship in relation to the conse- 
cration of the will, there is to be no possible 
escape \>y any finite and free creature of God. 

If the broad principle be true that we were 
made for the awakening and training of the 
noblest affections, and for the dedication of the 
will, we must all be involved in clouds enough, 
be pressed by burdens heavy enough, be sub- 
mitted to severities of condition enough, to fur- 
nish the will with the opportunity of making a 
controlling choice of something higher than it 
clearly sees, and of conjoining itself deliberately 
to God ; thus receiving his life into the central 
artery of our spiritual nature. Jesus did this in 
Gethsemane. The cup seemed very bitter ; the 
cloud passed over the face of Infinite Love. His 
heart was rent. He said, Let this experience be 
kept from me, — " Nevertheless, not as I will, but 
as thou wilt." He acknowledged the Highest 
Law then. He was made perfect, his will was 
perfectly united with the Divine through suffering. 
He was then a perfectly free being in the universe, 
completely united with the Infinite Love, — the 
Perfect Son. 

And thus the saying is true, "He scourgeth 
every son whom he receiveth." Not for the sake 
of the scourging, not by arbitrary determination, 
but because the finite spirit cannot flower out into 
its richest capacity, its consummate excellence, 
its possibility of noble, sweet, perpetual joy, until, 
under the pressure of some sort of calamity or 



Distribution of Sorrows. 165 



hardship, it makes the conscious homage to an 
Infinite excellence, and submits itself to the dis- 
posal of a Sovereign mind and mercy. 

Some persons do this in the experience of many, 
of the countless forms in which trial visits us in 
this world. Loss of property is the condition 
in which not a few find it. Desertion by friends 
is the shock that drives others to it. Sickness is 
the seclusion in which still others wake to a sense 
of their relation to the source of life. An experi- 
ence of the evil hidden in one's nature is the 
spur that incites another class. Contemplation 
of the woes that afflict the race as a whole shows 
to others their need of faith in an Infinite justice 
and compassion on whose purposes their hearts 
can lean. The loss of kindred and friends is the 
condition of its attainment by thousands more. 
But all these fail, with multitudes, to induce such 
consecration. They are postponing the acquisi- 
tion of the purpose of their creation. And where 
persons do not experience any of these or similar 
hardships, their trials are simply reserved for a 
future stage of their existence. It may be that 
they will not come in such forms as they assume 
in this world ; but the only theory which throws 
any noble meaning on this world bids us believe 
that they are yet to come in some form powerful 
enough to waken the whole nature, and lift it by 
a decisive choice into a dedicated state. 

There is this difference between mental and 
moral training or education. The first consists in 



1 66 Distribution of Sorrows. 



gaining knowledge ; the second in attaining a 
certain state of will. Power is the all-essential 
object in the first case ; submission and allegiance 
in the other, — allegiance that flows from choice, 
and the comprehensive feeling that there is 
no other life which is worthy or desirable, and no 
other method of attaching our nature to the cur- 
rents of the Infinite life. A person with a soul 
who fails to be plunged into perplexities and hard- 
ships enough to press the will heavily and give it 
no peace till it rises into this highest state misses 
the object of his creation, just as much as a mind 
would that should not be aroused from a listless 
and happy ignorance to be strained and buffeted 
in the exercise of pursuing truth. And if the 
circumstances of this life have been too easy to 
admit such dramatic antagonism between a life 
self-centred and a life centred in God, and drawn 
from him, it is a proof that the Sovereign grace 
has postponed the crisis-trial of the life thus 
made so easy here to the future existence. 

The Church has hindered men from taking 
such a view by its doctrine that this life is a final 
state of probation, or that only punishment or re- 
ward follows men into the future. Such a hack- 
ing at the laws which bind our whole life into 
spiritual unity is fatal to any broad and impressive 
conception of its purpose, and of the relation to 
each other of the two states. We must come to 
believe that countless spirits go into the next life 
to meet trials and burdens which are not punish- 



Distribution of Sorrows. 167 

merit or doom, but discipline, education, the prep- 
aration for life. We must set that world, not in 
a sentimental and rosy light, as many Universal- 
ists do, — not in a lurid, frightful light, as Cal- 
vin ists do, — not separating it into two latitudes, 
within one of which all is misery, and within the 
other perfected and rather formal, if not tedious, 
bliss, — but in the light of the fact that the vast 
majority of people go from this world into it 
with unkindled spiritual powers, which are to 
be wakened there by the only means competent 
to fit a free nature to become a channel for the 
Infinite life. When a soul says, " Thy will be 
done," and says it from the core of its being, its 
spiritual education is completed ; it passes up 
then into joy. Until it says this it is not born 
into the kingdom of God, and its great capaci- 
ties of enjoyment are not opened. Until it has 
experienced trials enough to make it feel the 
boundless importance of saying this, the goodness 
of God has not been perfectly manifest towards 
it, and is waiting to reveal itself in the world to 
come. 

This view, brethren, not only puts this life in 
more vital and rational and beneficent connection 
with the next, but it teaches us how to regard 
those who are set in opposite conditions of for- 
tune in this world. I believe that essentially 
equal spiritual trials are to be appointed, in the 
long run, to all souls. For those who are born 
under the very dominion of evil here, with organ- 



1 68 Distribution of Sorrows. 



izations that determine to vice, and whose circum- 
stances are infinitely less favorable than some of 
us are circled with, I cannot but believe that 
there is to be compensation in the world to come, 
so that they shall not be able, in comparison with 
any of us, to impeach the Infinite equity. But 
when we see a soul loaded with sorrow, bowed 
by poverty, chained to a sick-room, flooded by 
disasters, robbed of friends, torn by disappoint- 
ments, tossed on a sea of afflictions that do not, 
of necessity, utterly overwhelm it, we may say 
here is a spirit, whom God is now carrying 
through the test-season of its education. And if 
the spirit is not crushed by all that rolls against 
it, if it shows fortitude in adversity, patience in 
scourging, serenity in sickness, trust in bereave- 
ment, if it says, " I know that God must be 
good in all this ; I cannot see his purpose, but I 
do not doubt its beneficence ; ' Though he slay 
me, yet will I trust in him;' his will be done," 
we may say here is a triumphant life ; here is the 
great work accomplished' for which a soul is 
fashioned and made heir to an eternal life ; here 
is a spiritual state attained which opens the whole 
infinite to its possession and makes the universe 
a home ; here is the ore of nature tempered into 
the Christian steel. And when such a one dies, 
the chimes sound in the unseen world in welcome 
of a soul for whom eternity has nothing but in- 
finite beauty, opportunities of noble service, the 
joy of receiving and imparting the spirit of God. 



Distribution of Sorrozvs. i6g 

And shall we not, especially, be led to look at 
our own experience in the light of this principle ? 
If any of us are tempted, or are accustomed to 
consider our own hardships greater, and myste- 
riously greater, than those of others whom we 
know, if we think that their lot would be far 
preferable to ours, let us be assured that trial is 
the necessary spiritual condition of a dedicated 
will, and that whatever earthly lot we might take 
in exchange for our own, we must, in the future of 
our being, take some form of hardship that will 
make consecration essential for our relief, and that 
will set our consecration in intense light upon its 
background before the moral universe. If we 
should half dream away our mortal years in an 
Arcadia on this earth, we could not slip this law. 

Whatever our trial be, therefore, — poverty, 
sickness, hostile social circumstances, misappre- 
ciation by others, loss of friends, the approach 
of death, — let us ask ourselves, how it would 
seem, what different aspect it would wear, what 
uses it might serve, how much easier it might 
be borne, if we were conscious of being nearer 
to God, if we had faith in Providence, if we 
felt the presence of a filial spirit that nothing 
could break ? This question will reveal to us the 
Divine estimate of what seems at first our hard 
condition. And if we see and feel that our lot 
would be immeasurably different if we had such 
faith, and a will in harmony with God's, then we 
see the Divine conditions under which our spiritual 
8 



170 Distribution of Sorrows. 

life is to be wrought into strength. For we may be 
sure that if we refuse our faith and allegiance now, 
we must make them in the future under no easier 
terms. God does not lower the laws to suit our 
deliberate weakness. 

And let us remember, too, that until we make 
that consecration, that act of faith, all life will 
be a trial ; there will be no perennial happiness 
distilled for us ; we cannot know inwardly the love 
of God, because we will not graft our life upon it ; 
we cannot be conscious of the liberty of sonship. 



859. 



XI. 



DELIVERANCE FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

" And deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their 
lifetime subject to bondage." — Hebrews xi. 15. 

THE passage in the letter to the Hebrews 
with which the verse just read is connected 
declares that a prominent purpose of the ministry 
of Christ was to deliver men from the bondage 
which the dread of death, and of all that is asso- 
ciated with death, produces. It implies, therefore, 
that a deep and wise religious culture shows its 
crowning blessedness and power by breaking that 
fear in the soul; by lifting the whole nature above 
it ; by inspiring the mind and heart to exclaim, as 
the highest passage in its chant of triumph over 
the world, " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, 
where is thy victory ? Thanks be to God, who giv- 
eth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ! " 

I am sure that if we should all of us look into 
our own natures fairly, or consult our own expe- 
rience, we should say that the greatest spiritual 
blessing that could be bestowed upon us would be 
such a set of principles or such a tone of feeling 
as would deliver us completely, now and to the 



172 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

end of our days, from all bondage of mind and of 
sentiment to the power of death. When we set 
the problem of death before the mind in its 
breadth, solemnity, and gloom, as it has engaged 
the thought and the fears of the wisest of our race 
in every nation and century ; when we think how 
men have recoiled from it as the end of all that is 
pleasant in their knowledge of the beauty and 
wonder of nature, the end visibly of the light, the 
cheer, the music of this palpable world, the end 
of human fellowship, and the ministries of human 
love ; when we think of it as the vast black cur- 
tain dropped from the heavens across the track of 
every living being, and closing up the vista against 
all the strainings and importunity of sense ; when 
we think how many myriads have passed to the 
other side of it, and yet that we hear no chorus 
from them that they still live arid love and worship 
there, that no waves of influence come to us so 
demonstrably as to break our scepticism while we 
are at our toil, while we are amid perplexities that 
would be cleared away if we could have mes- 
sages unmistakable and inspiring from that misty 
sphere ; when we think of the terrors and quak- 
ings with which human breasts have been shaken 
by the haunting suspicion of the woes that may 
await them after they shall have passed beyond 
that drop-scene, and consider to how many mil- 
lions the assurance that there is no future life 
would be unspeakably welcome, as a relief from 
the tortures of their education or the forebodings 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 173 

of their guilt, — must we not be convinced that the 
view which a man has of death, and of all related 
to it, is the exhibition and efflorescence of all his 
religious faith and principles ? Must we not see 
that the man who can face that question calmly, 
the man who can say from the level of his religious 
character, " I am not afraid to die ; I am not 
afraid of anything that lurks behind that solemn 
screen ; I detect the stragglings through it of an 
intenser light than is around us here ; I believe 
that everything which makes this world a privilege 
is offered still more largely to my essential nature 
when I pass into the region which the grave 
hides ; I feel no shadow and no dread cast upon 
my work, darkening my home, or creeping into 
my heart, at the thought of death, because I be- 
lieve that God has a still higher good in store for 
me, and mine, and all humanity, in the sphere 
beyond the grave," — must we not acknowledge 
that such a man has attained the highest victory 
in thought and feeling which Christian faith can 
give, that his calmness, his trust, his deliverance 
from all the bondage which the certainty and the 
problem of death have ever wrought upon human- 
ity, are the clear and sufficient tests that the very 
noblest elements of Christian faith have ripened 
in his nature ? Has he not fulfilled in his expe- 
rience the promise of Christ, " Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth 
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and 
shall not come into condemnation \ but is passed 
from death unto lite " ? 



174 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

But now let us attend more particularly, and in 
order, to the bondage we suffer from the fear of 
death, and to the sources of deliverance from it. 

With a great many persons a prominent ele- 
ment of this thraldom is the fear of dying. A 
large number of persons, faithful persons, per- 
sons who are in a state of heart which frees them 
from much of the spiritual fear of death, surfer 
greatly from constitutional recoil at what may be 
the pain, or the mental terrors, or the anguish of 
the most sacred affections, in the dissolution of the 
spirit from the body, and the separation from 
those we love and must leave. 

Now, in the region of the highest truth there is 
provision by Infinite goodness against every con- 
stituent element of the fear of death ; and cer- 
tainly God calls us to see now, through abundant 
testimony of experience and of science, that this 
form of dread is gratuitous, and that it rests on 
delusion. Those that are well surfer vastly more 
from the thought of dying than the sick do from 
the experience of it. When the time comes there 
is not much dread of yielding the bodily life. 
It is natural to die, as it is natural to yield up 
our consciousness for rest and refreshment. It is 
probable that the proportion of those who suffer 
in the late stages of disease from the fear of 
breathing out their mortal vitality is far less than 
the number of those who suffer through nervous- 
ness from the inability to sink pleasantly into 
nightly sleep. 



Deliverance from the Fear of DeatJi. 175 

There is scarcely any department of human 
experience to which scientific scrutiny has been 
directed during the last century, which has yielded 
such novel and striking illustrations of the benefi- 
cence of God, as the distribution and the economy 
of pain. It reveals his truth, it reveals his jus- 
tice, it publishes the severity of his laws, and the 
vast value he sets upon the living in accordance 
with his statutes, physical as well as moral ; but 
it publishes, also, his beneficence. For the great 
principle has been established, that, when pain 
can no longer serve as a guard, a monitor, and a 
warning, it is taken away. And in accordance 
with the principle we find that the dread of dying 
melts, when it can no longer serve as a protection 
to our life, when the vital power is hopelessly 
smitten. A distinguished physician and physiolo- 
gist of England has recently borne testimony 
that, in the range of his large experience, he has 
known but two cases where there was manifest 
dread of dying in the experience of dissolution 
itself ; and these were persons who had no long 
experience of sickness, but were snatched away 
quite suddenly by the effects of accident, when in 
full health. 

I am quite sure that the testimony of clergy- 
men will point in the same direction. It is very 
rarely, I am convinced, that the will does not 
yield, when it becomes a settled certainty that 
the bodily life must ebb away, even though in 
the earlier stages of disease there may have been 



176 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

anxious, painful, or rebellious recoil from the 
thought of death. And then clergymen can bear 
abundant testimony to the strange fact that the 
affections, also, are calm in the last hours. Even 
when they are most refined, and are complicated 
widely and delicately with earthly love, it is very 
strange how serenely they unclasp from their ob- 
jects, with what sweetness and resignation they 
learn to say " farewell," and how, when all around 
the bedside are penetrated with the grief that 
wrings from the very soul the bitterest tears, they 
can give up all that has been most delightful 
in earthly companionship with unmoistened eyes 
and with faltering tones of courage and conso- 
lation. 

The pain of dying, too, has been exaggerated. 
By the testimony of the wisest physicians there is 
no place in human language for that phrase, 
"the last mortal agony." The vast majority of 
the children of God breathe out their life with 
entire unconsciousness of suffering. The angel of 
death hovers over the mortal couch as a friend ; 
and in almost every death-chamber the words of 
David may be read as an interpretation of the 
last experience which the spirit has of its partner- 
ship with flesh, — " He giveth his beloved sleep." 

O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
O men, with wailing in your voices ! 
O delved gold, the wailers heap ! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God makes a silence through you all, 
And " giveth his beloved sleep." 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 1 77 

We may say, as a general truth, therefore, that 
we are disturbed by illusions, if we are in bond- 
age from the fear of dying as a physical experi- 
ence, or from dread of the distresses which the 
finer sensibilities and affections may suffer in the 
last hours or days. There is so little of such 
distress, so unfrequently any expression of recoil 
from the fact of dying, or of unwillingness to die, 
when the time draws near, such a general acqui- 
escence in the call to pass away from the outward 
life, to give up property, to leave home and friends, 
to leave behind all the strifes of the market 
and the street, to say, "I am ready now to rest 
and to await what God may have in store," that 
it is impossible to tell, from the experience of the 
last hours, how deep the consecration of the soul 
has been, or what is its inmost religious state. 
We are delivered in a great measure, then, from 
fear by natural laws expressing the goodness of 
God that play within the constitution of our 
being. 

The real deliverance from the bondage of 
death, the only one which will test the re ig- 
iousness of our thought and the consecration of 
our will, must be wrought out while we are in 
health. It lies in the thorough comprehension 
by the mind of all the doubts and all the terrors 
that can be associated with death, and the disper- 
sion of them by principles which the mind holds 
with a conviction which grows with its growth 
and strengthens with its strength. 

8* L 



178 Deliverance from the Fear of Death, 

And in this connection we must speak first of 
the dread of death as the cessation of our being. 
The religious sentiment and the Christian meet 
this fear by the principle that our life does not 
and cannot cease here ; that this existence is but 
the threshold of our experience. But in order to 
conquer death in our imagination and our feeling 
we must take this principle into the very substance 
of our thought and of our nature. The senses are 
the great enemy of the doctrine of immortality. 
It is only by serious discipline that we can con- 
quer their opposition to it, and make it a central 
and illuminating, a controlling principle in our 
life. We must train ourselves to feel that the 
soul is really the substantial thing ; that the body 
exists for the soul, and not the soul for the frame. 
We must rise into the custom of perceiving that, 
by the testimony of our own consciousness, the 
moral forces within us are the deepest and com- 
manding ones. W T e must bring ourselves up to a 
steady perception of the fact that all experience 
which tests, which educates, and which increases 
moral and spiritual forces in us, is the most valu- 
able experience which men ever get; so that none 
of us would think of denying that poverty and 
hardship and pain had proved noble blessings for 
a man if they made him more virtuous, more rev- 
erent, purer in heart, and stronger in will. We 
must protect ourselves against estimating the 
importance and the worth of life by anything 
outward, anything like sensuous enjoyment, repu- 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 1 79 

tation, worldly place or scale of living, and must 
make our standard of it moral and inward, the 
exercise of religious loyalty, charity, acquaintance 
with God through all the publications of His life 
and by all our faculties, and then we shall be in 
the condition to know how immortality can seem 
the natural truth in relation to our spirits, and how 
this existence can be and is only the scaffolding 
for building up the outer walls of our nature. 

We cannot get such a belief in immortality as 
will deliver us from the bondage of death until 
we can see that the next life, if it be true at all, 
according to the Christian interpretation of it, 
must be in the proper sense more substantial 
than this ; and more substantial because it will 
call into play more steadily those powers of our 
humanity which are the only substantial things in 
us here, — the mind, which takes up no room, and 
which may grow indefinitely without any increase 
of the bodily organization ; the heart, which does 
not draw from any material source in growing 
more self-sacrificing and affectionate ; the taste 
for pure beauty, which feeds itself year after year 
on the wonders and charms of God's works, and 
grows year after year by what it feeds on, and yet 
takes nothing from outward nature and gives no 
material sign of its own increase ; and the relig- 
ious sensibilities, which feel after God and com- 
mune with him, and imbibe the deepest joy from 
such communion, and yet are unseen and feed 
themselves from unseen springs. 



1 80 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

Ah, my friends, so long as you believe that the 
body is the substantial side of your humanity be- 
cause you have sensible experience of it, and that 
the solid world is the chief reality outside of you 
because it resists your touch and is lighted to your 
eye ; so long as you fail to perceive that intellect 
is an unspeakably higher and more real thing than 
your array of muscles, that the law of duty is of 
a higher grade of substance and value than your 
blood, that virtue and the power of knowing God 
are more essential portions of your personality 
than your arteries and your nerves, and are nobler 
than your intellect besides, and that, outside of 
you, the wisdom of God, the glory of God, the 
goodness and sustaining power of God, which 
alone give this world and the universe meaning 
and majesty and beauty to your mind, are unut- 
terably higher and more real things than the 
layers of rock beneath you, and the deeps of air 
above, and that the Spirit of God is vaster and 
more substantial than all the height and compass 
of this creation, which was called into visible 
being by his breath, — you are not in the condi- 
tion to feel yet the victorious faith in immortality! 
You are weighed down by matter, and must move 
along to the other and the spiritual pole of the 
scale of thought. When you once get there, and 
see that this world exists for what is best in you, 
and that everything lovely and grand in nature is 
the quickening and the food for something noble 
and moral in you, and that it is a spiritual consti- 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 1 8 1 

tution which God has housed in your body, to be 
educated here, then you grasp the principle that 
dissipates death from your thoughts, and that lifts 
you into seeing that the next life, instead of being 
a pleasant fancy or an empty sphere of ghosts, 
may be more substantial than this, though invisi- 
ble now, by appealing directly, without the me- 
dium of the body and without the interruption of 
bodily cares and needs, to our power of learning 
truth, to our capacity of enjoying Divine beauty, 
to our moral faculty and capability of excellence 
and power of service, to all the faculties through 
which we know God and by which we are his 
children. It is thus, brethren, that we must 
vitalize and inflame the idea of immortality into 
victory over our senses and their scepticism, and 
over the bondage of the fear that the death of the 
body is the quenching of our life. 

And now I must speak of the bondage created 
by the fear of what may come after death. There 
are very few persons, comparatively, who take and 
keep a spiritual view of the universe and of hu- 
man life, such as we have just unfolded, and thus 
gain an intelligent victory over death as the foe 
of their conscious being. But there are a great 
many who have a lurking and phantom faith in 
immortality, and are kept by it in dread, from fear 
of terrors which may hide there, and with which 
the laws of God are armed. This is the super- 
stitious servitude in the fear of death. Unwhole- 
some or unripe religion has fostered it for centu- 



1 82 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

ries. True Christianity tries to conquer this by 
inspiring us with confidence in the justice of the 
Almighty. 

For one, brethren, I believe most seriously that 
death is a crisis in our spiritual history. I be- 
lieve that it is an important and tremendous crisis. 
Unrobing the spirit of the flesh ; lifting it out 
from connection with the world in which it may 
have taken ignoble and unholy pleasure; striking 
away from it the cushion of its sloth, the banquets 
of its transitory delight, the channels of its vice, 
the pleasant draperies with which it has curtained 
itself against the calls of duty; setting it face to 
face with the splendors of truth, for which its 
untrained eye is weak, before the blaze of holy real- 
ities, and within the grasp of laws whose majesty 
it has slighted, but which it sees now in all their 
severity and grandeur ; unloosing it, a weak and 
faithless spirit, it may be, in a spiritual world the 
alphabet of whose language it refused, perhaps, 
to learn in the flesh, — I dare not tell you that I 
think this will be anything less than a mighty and 
tremendous crisis for you and for me. All easy 
and volatile raptures about passing from this world 
into the next, as though then all care is over and 
peace is sure, sound to me not only weak but 
repulsive. 

And yet no emotion of fellowship can I ever 
feel with a faith that stimulates or allows any fear 
of Infinite justice in the world to come. Essen- 
tially that is blasphemy. Do not believe that any 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 1 83 

force or quality of the Infinite Being can be your 
foe. Any scheme of religious thought which tells 
us that we have the opportunity here, through the 
partial goodness of God, to escape his justice in 
the world to come, though many of the best men 
on this earth have taught it and seemed to believe 
it, is a dreadful form of paganism. Our only hope 
here or anywhere is in the justice of God. In its 
severity, in its tenacity, in the terrors with which 
it faces your guilt, in the tones with which, through 
your conscience, it shakes your soul, it is still a 
form of the Infinite Love. When you are in sick- 
ness, do you dread the medicine that alone can 
search the hidings of your disease as though it were 
your foe? Do you recoil from the physician, and 
call him your enemy, because he will not talk 
smooth words to you, but tells you of your vio- 
lation of the laws of your constitution, and warns 
you if you do not turn and obey them ? O my 
friend, see that Infinite justice is your medicine ! 
If your mind is dark by the absence of knowledge, 
and God brings his truth near to you, and keeps 
it there, and tries to educate you through mental 
toil and pain to welcome it and rejoice in it, will 
you call him your foe because he will not let you 
wrap yourself in your gloom and live away in your 
thought? See, now, I beseech you, that Infinite 
justice, besieging thus the moral side of our be- 
ing, is for our moral education, — the constant 
possibility of it, the constant pledge that it will 
not be neglected ! 



1 84 Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 

The highest act of faith which the soul can 
utter is to say that it is not afraid of the justice 
of God, into whatever world it may be lifted. 
When a friend of mine is taken into the next life, 
I do not ask to know if he is at once perfectly 
happy, or how soon he may be so. I ask only to 
know if he has gone into the discipline of perfect 
justice. I would not be afraid to give up my 
dearest to that. Without Infinite justice I am 
sure that God cannot be perfectly good. And I 
know that in his perfect justice he cannot hate 
me. He is, and must be, hostile to the evil that 
is in me, because that keeps me from him and cor- 
rupts my spirit. To be forsaken of Infinite jus- 
tice, so that God should not hold you under his 
law, or care for your improvement, would be the 
dreadful doom. And so, if I were about to pass 
into the next world, I should have no fear to pray 
that Infinite justice might search me, and put me 
to its sternest discipline, to break within me the 
power of evil that corrupts the affections and de- 
grades the will. 

Dread of the discipline that may come after 
death is dread of God, and that is indeed bond- 
age. O you who have been called to yield your 
best beloved into the arms of that messenger that 
# bears the spirit from the outer to the inner shrine 
of God's great temple, let no doubt that the Infi- 
nite Righteousness is friendly to his children, even 
when they are stained with evil, unsettle or becloud 
your trust ! Whithersoever we go in God's limit- 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 185 

less universe, his continual and blessed purpose 
with us is to raise us up to see his truth, enjoy his 
glory, serve and love his children, adore his excel- 
lence, and receive his life. Nothing but evil in 
our constitution can prevent us from advancing in 
such knowledge and such joy ; and the justice of 
God is our best friend hereafter, if it prevents us 
by its discipline there from being content with 
evil, and if, through training and pain, it develops 
us to a ready and large reception of the Divine 
spirit and love. 

Trust in God is the all-essential spirit to culti- 
vate, in order to have a right estimate of death, 
and to be delivered from the bondage of its fear. 
God is the grand truth of this universe. God is 
the substratum of this universe. Light and dark- 
ness, the kingdom of life and the realm of death, 
are all embraced in the circle of his power and 
goodness. Live as close as you can to him, 
by listening to conscience, by a consecrated will, 
by giving your pure affections play, by doing good 
to others from a disposition of charity which you 
desire to deepen, and through all these ways seek- 
ing to make confidence in his rule and trust in 
his infinitude the controlling undermood of the 
heart; this is to conquer death by fastening the 
spirit to the very source of life. As soon as we 
can learn to feel that God is the foundation and 
support, the substance and sustenance, of our souls 
and all that is around our souls in this life, and 
that his laws are perfect and his love constant 



1 86 Deliverance from the Fear of Death, 

and wise now, we are armed against all fear of the 
grave or of a change of worlds. For then we 
shall feel that if God sees it is best for us to live 
hereafter and forever, he will bear us across the 
grave ; and we shall feel assured that God, who 
changes not, will be as wise, as patient, as just, 
and as merciful in the circumstances of eternity 
as in those of time. 

The Infinite Spirit invites us all to this trust in 
him, to as much confidence in his justice as in his 
mercy, to trust in him who is equity and mercy 
and truth and beneficence equally, perfectly, and 
always. Christ would help us to conquer death, 
and all the ills which death brings to our homes 
and hearts, and all the doubts and distresses which 
the contemplation of death intrudes upon the 
soul, by inspiring this all-conquering and all-illu- 
mining trust. Confidence in God as the perfect 
Ruler, Father, and Spirit of this universe is Chris- 
tianity. By opening the possibility of this percep- 
tion and reliance, Christ has conquered death for 
us, more than by his miracles, his resurrection, 
and his personal defeat of the grave. He gives 
us the sanctity and tenderness and sweetness of 
his spirit, his truthfulness and his love, as the 
complexion to throw upon the Infinite, so that 
we can say, Whoso hath seen Christ hath seen 
the Father. In the spirit of trust in God's govern- 
ment, in time and eternity, which we can all have 
by denying our passions, consecrating our will, 
and opening our souls to heaven, we can echo 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 187 



the saying of Paul : " All things are yours ; whether 
Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, 
or death, or things present, or things to come ; all 
are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is 
God's." 

1857. 



XII. 



THE TWO HARVESTS. 



" The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not 
saved." — Jeremiah viii. 20. 



'HE text sets nature in solemn contrast with 



X human life, — " The harvest is past, the sum- 
mer is ended, and we are not saved," — suggesting 
to us for serious thought, not merely that a certain 
length of time has elapsed and we have been spir- 
itually listless, not simply that an opportunity has 
gone by which we have not filled with duty, but 
that something beneficent and sacred has been 
going on in the outward world with which we have 
not been in harmony ; that the elements have 
been doing their work while we have been mis- 
doing ours ; and that, measured against nature, at 
the close of one of its fruitful seasons, we seem 
out of order, discordant, away from God, unser- 
viceable, and unprofitable : in a word, " we are not 
saved." Turn then to-day from contemplating 
your life and your character before the Biblical 
standard of purity and charity, and think of 
human life in contrast with the characteristics 
of nature's principles and productiveness. Think 




The Two Harvests. 189 

how the human world must look under the eye 
of God, relieved against the loyalty and order of 
nature every year ! 

The harvest is past. Not a spear of wheat has 
grown, not a kernel of corn has hardened, not a 
beet has reddened in the ground, not an apple or 
a plum has nursed sweet juices through the tree 
out of the ground, that has not revealed or illus- 
trated, in the process of its growth, a principle 
which ought to be carried out in nobler ways 
by human souls. Our dependence on God, our 
reception of his light and his spiritual rain, our 
fidelity to the duty of the circumstances in which 
we are set, our success in bending chilly days 
and gusts of adversity to usefulness in strength- 
ening character, ought to fulfil the lessons which 
every vine and every tree publish in their use of 
sunshine and soil and dew and storm. 

And the bounty of the harvest is for this pur- 
pose. Think what that bounty has been in this 
country this year ! If we could gather into one 
mass all the grains, the fruits, and the vegetables, 
all that the earth has yielded and that man may 
partake of, within the borders of our own nation 
during the last six months, they would fill a store- 
house, as high and as wide as an ordinary country 
barn, that would stretch from the easternmost 
coast of our country, beyond the Mississippi, 
beyond the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific 
shore of Oregon. If the whole bounty of Provi- 
dence during the creative season of the year 



190 The Two Harvests. 



should be massed thus by the Almighty, and our 
people should be obliged to go, person by person 
or family by family, to such a monstrous bin to 
receive their share of the land's exuberance, how 
poetic and how impressive would the munificence 
of God through the harvest seem, how vividly 
would our dependence be revealed to us, how 
unnatural would the taking of the heavenly gifts 
without gratitude appear ! And if now we take 
the fruit of the earth, which is only the varied 
expression of the punctuality of Providence in 
the weaving of the seasons and the alternations 
of sunshine and shower, and if we renew our 
strength from it day after day with no reverence 
in our thought and no thankfulness in our heart 
to the unsparing and unwearied Giver, then the 
truth of the text is directly revealed in our state ; 
the harvest stands as the background to show off 
the truth that "we are not saved," — that we are 
out of harmony, through the coldness of our sen- 
timent, with the boundless beneficence, — since, 
while every loaded ear of grain bends as if in ado- 
ration of creative liberality, we, for whom it was 
designed and nourished by the Infinite, receive 
from it no motive to reverent thanksgiving, no 
impulse to joyous prayer ! 

The earth is for man, the bounties of earth 
are for man ; and the success of every harvest, 
judged from the spiritual world, is tried by this 
test, — how much spiritual fruit does it mature? 
how many noble human qualities blossom out of 



The Two Harvests. 



191 



the life and the strength which the earth's bounty- 
supplies ? into how much that is infinitely higher 
than nature does the harvest get transformed by 
being lifted up into man ? 

O brethren, how ought we to be saddened, how 
ought we to be humbled, how ought the law and 
call of the Gospel to glow before us in the colors 
of a fresh solemnity, when we think of the differ- 
ence which God sees when he turns from the 
natural world to a survey of the human world ! In 
nature all is order. There is no sinful planet ; 
there is no selfish or miserly sun ; there is no 
galaxy of wicked or discordant stars ; the winds 
are not rebellious ; the sea does not refuse ser- 
vice ; the clouds do not loiter on their errands ; 
the hills are not penurious ; the ground does not 
bar its bosom against the influence of sunbeams 
and rains. God's law, God's holiness, God's 
charity, are reflected in the loyalty and the purity 
and the fraternity visible in all the facts and 
forces of the outward world. 

But when the Divine eye turns from the house 
to the tenants, what discord, what folly, what 
rebellion ! Suppose that the human race should 
be turned by miracle into portions of the natural 
world, — should be transformed into a part of the 
vegetable domain, and should express there the 
same qualities that they exhibit now in human 
ways, the same passions, the same bitterness, 
the same impurity, the same selfishness, the same 
hatred, instead of the beauty and bounty that 



192 



The Two Harvests. 



now adorn and load the valleys and the hills, 
what a scanty, shrivelled, sour, and ugly harvest 
would appear ! 

Suppose that you, my friend, if you are leading 
a life unregulated and alien from God, should be 
turned, just as you are, into a tree, and should 
act, as a tree, precisely as you now act as a man. 
Your disobedience of spiritual laws would be 
shown in the refusal of the tree to throw out its 
roots to be rightly balanced in nature. Your 
lack of spiritual growth would be exhibited in the 
neglect of the tree to widen its rings, and stretch 
its bark, and rear its trunk, and push out its 
boughs every year, in order to reach its intended 
stature. The poverty of your spiritual sensibili- 
ties would appear in wan and shrivelled leaves ; 
your denial of heavenly grace in the opposition of 
the tree to quickening sunshine, and its resistance 
to mellowing rains ; the wrong thoughts you cher- 
ish, in foul insect-webs and broods that would 
net the branches with their vile and deadening 
threads ; your lack of service, in the refusal of 
the tree to bear any fruit, although it was the 
intention of God that it should glorify his provi- 
dence in branches laden with sweet benefactions 
to the race ; your vices, in the rust, the mould, or 
the canker on the bark, telling of corrupt juices 
within. 

How many men there are who would recoil 
from themselves if they could see themselves 
thus translated down into some portion of nature's 



The Two Harvests. 



193 



lower domain, — could see what shrivelled wheat, 
what musty corn, what blighted grapes, what frost- 
bitten and bitter plums, would be yielded every 
year if nature was not better, in its order, than 
they are on their plane? O, if a miser could 
only see what a poor, gnarled, pinched crab-apple 
tree he would turn into, if his spirit should sink 
to a lower order of creation and take the same 
rank he has now ; or if the fretful and morose 
man could look at the prickly pear that is his 
equivalent ; or if the man of depraved principles 
could have a fair view of the deadly nightshade 
or blistering upas he would turn into in such a 
metamorphosis, — no more stirring or burning ser- 
mon could be preached than to force a man to 
look thus into a symbolic mirror of himself. 

Do you not see, my brethren, how pure, how 
loyal, how serviceable, you must be in order to be 
on the level of nature ? We are called superior 
to nature, and yet the autumn fruitfulness, the 
peace of the outward world, condemn us. There 
is not one man in fifty thousand, the globe over, 
that is as true in his sphere as every stalk of 
corn is that goes into an autumn sheaf. There 
is not one man in a million, take Christendom 
through, that is noble enough to have his life, in 
its quality and its fruitfulness, represented by the 
history of an average peach-tree. Every closing 
summer, every completed harvest, preaches to us 
that we are not saved by showing us we are not 
up to the suggestions of the sphere we live in ; 
9 M 



194 



The Two Harvests. 



that, as a race, we are less than natural ; and 
that God sees more of himself reflected in the 
harmonies of creation than in the fidelity and 
the fruitfulness of the souls made in his likeness. 

The Church is the vineyard in which we are to 
be nurtured, if possible, to be natural. If we 
were, as a people, up to the level of the life sug- 
gested by the harvest just gathered, what frater- 
nity would be organized into our society ; what 
genial and constant service ; what far-running, 
complicated, and interlocked unity of life ; what 
absence of infamy, what virtue, what joy ! It 
will take ages of experience, disaster, suffering, 
and woe before the grace of God shall find human 
minds wise enough, human hearts tender enough, 
human wills submissive enough, to band them- 
selves into a society that shall give the Infinite 
Father as much joy as the spectacle of the har- 
vest gives to the Infinite Creator ; before that old 
prophecy can be realized, foretelling the time 
when man shall be loyal as nature, — " As the 
rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and 
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and 
maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give 
seed to the sower, and bread to the eater : so 
shall my word be, that goeth forth out of my 
mouth j it shall not return unto me void, but it 
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall 
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." 

The wealth of the harvest, you know, is, in 
large measure, from the seed scattered or planted 



The Two Harvests. 



195 



in the spring. And see how, in this aspect of it, 
the faithfulness of nature supplies a serious back- 
ground to set off the poverty, the unsaved and 
unsafe condition, of human life. What a ter- 
rible calamity it would be to society if the readi- 
ness of the earth to receive and welcome the 
seeds dropped into her bosom, and protected by 
human watchfulness, should be broken ! What a 
dreadful judgment upon us all, if the soil should 
have the power and the tendency to cast them 
out from its furrows, to refuse them shelter and 
nutriment, and, instead, to take down into its mel- 
lowed substance the germs of briers and weeds ! 

And yet, would such a change in the disposi- 
tion and forces of the soil do anything more than 
bring nature, which we live in, into accord with 
the tendencies and habits of our inward life? 
God is showering seed upon your soul continu- 
ally. He does not leave you a day without send- 
ing a quickening lesson or a noble thought or a 
conviction of sinfulness or a pure motive into 
your soul. Think of the last year as a whole, 
and how many blessed appeals and influences 
have reached you, — how many sacred solicita- 
tions to live more reverently than you have lived, 
how many serious pleadings to give up a wrong 
indulgence, how many warnings against the 
bondage of a bad habit, how many stings of the 
sensibilities for your moral weakness, how many 
thrilling invitations to live more usefully, how 
many sweet calls to mount up to a higher plane 



196 



The Two Harvests. 



of feeling and action, where you would find more 
cheer and more peace ! How thickly has God 
strewn mercies over your spirit the past year ! 
How has he invited you, in seasons of silence and 
in presence of nature, to recognize him, ever so 
near to you ; to adore him, so patient and faith- 
ful in belting you with his power and laws; to 
rely on him, upon whom all nature leans ! How 
has he sprinkled holy words of Jesus upon your 
ear, that hold the central truths of this universe, 
and that are saturated with the very essence of 
his love ! How has he shaken the rich leaves 
of the Bible over your nature, loosening from 
them instructions that are for the healing of 
nations ! How has he scattered the privileges 
of Sunday and the Church over your hearts, — 
hymns and sacred song and prayers and instruc- 
tions, to whose permanent central verity your 
souls have often said Amen ! And now and 
then God has disturbed your nature with trial, or 
broken it with adversity, or he has ploughed it 
deep and powdered it with sorrow, and then with 
the drill of heaven he has sunk some truth of the 
celestial order, essential to your enduring welfare, 
into your being. Ye are thus God's husbandry. 
And what result? Each of these whispers, les- 
sons, messages, was sent as a seed to reappear in 
your character, as the grain of wheat or the 
kernel of corn pours upward a living bounty sixty- 
fold. But what proportion of them have taken 
hold of your hearts ? How many of them have 



The Two Harvests. 



197 



not perished there ? How few of them that have 
not been ejected from our bosoms, spurned from 
the hostile substance of our souls, when we have 
found what consecration, what vigilance, what 
noble toil, were demanded to make them rooted 
and fruitful forces of our life? The Infinite Spirit 
looks at the outward harvest, and the luscious 
music of the Psalmist's eloquence exhales from it: 
" The little hills rejoice on every side. The pas- 
tures are clothed with flocks ; the valleys also are 
covered over with corn ; they shout for joy, they 
also sing." He looks from this bounty to the 
wide landscape of humanity, and what is there 
to respond as the antistrophe to that chant of 
nature, but the words, " I went by the field of 
the slothful, .... and lo, it was all grown over 
with thorns, and nettles had covered the face 
thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken 
down." It is the inversion of prophecy that we 
exhibit : we harbor and nurture in our nature 
what is pleasant to the selfish mind for the mo- 
ment; and so, despite the Divine planting, the 
thorn comes up instead of the fir-tree, and the 
brier instead of the myrtle-tree, and the deso- 
lation stands before heaven as a sign that, while 
" the harvest is past and the summer is ended," 
past and ended in bounty and peace, " we are 
not saved." 

There is a traditional doctrine in the Christian 
Church that the earth was blasted in the very dawn 
of history for human sin. I beg you, in justice to 



198 The Two Harvests, 



the bountiful world, to see how false this is. It 
is better than we. Notwithstanding the care and 
the toil and the skill that must be expended to 
evoke a harvest, the earth is unspeakably more 
tractable, more obedient, more pure, more chari- 
table, than we are. It is a glorious exhibition of 
the grace of God that he saves us from living here 
in a world that corresponds to ourselves, that is 
far nobler than we. Swedenborg tells us that in 
the next world our surroundings, our whole visible 
scenery, will be the reflection or the emanation 
of our interior personal state. Men try to do that 
in this world. By war, by sloth, by misrule, by 
vice, by slavery, men try to ravage and desecrate 
and starve the earth to respond to their ignorance, 
folly, hatred, and sin ; but the earth is too divine 
to wear the image steadily, and it breaks out in 
new beauty, it bursts with fresh bounty, it honors 
anew the heavenly laws, as if to preach a perpet- 
ual sermon to our race, enforcing the appeal of 
Him who drew a lesson from agriculture for his 
Gospel, and winning us to harmony with the in- 
finite laws. 

Another truth which the contemplation of na- 
ture in contrast with humanity suggests, and espe- 
cially of the harvest in comparison with human 
fruitfulness in virtue, is the openness of the exter- 
nal world to the inflowing of as much of the Di- 
vine life as it can hold. Here we touch the deep- 
est lesson which our subject can yield. All good- 
ness comes from reception of the Divine Spirit. 



The Two Harvests. 



199 



All increase of goodness comes from enlarging or 
multiplying the channels for the reception and 
absorption of the Divine life. All evil is from 
the shutting out of God, or the perversion of his 
bounty and vitality by disease or sin, in the forms 
which he has fashioned to receive it. We are 
nothing of ourselves. " Neither is he that planteth 
anything, neither he that watereth, but God that 
giveth the increase." " Our sufficiency is of God." 

Now nature is always open to God. His laws 
find free course and are glorified up through all 
space, from our tiny planet to the outer edge of 
the milky way. Soften the soil, watch a seed, 
prune and graft a tree, and the blessed grace of 
sunshine and moisture will flow out through fresh 
and finer channels, and publish themselves in 
more lovely and savory fruit. The harvest is the 
beneficent transmutation of God's quickening 
vitality through vegetable veins into palpable sus- 
tenance for the children of men, the annual proof 
that there is no sin in the arteries of nature. 

But we are not in accord with it. We are not 
saved in this supreme sense. The human heart, 
the human will, is not thus open to God. The 
wave of the Divine vitality, passing upward from 
nature where it runs so free and is so welcome, 
finds obstruction and barriers in us. God is ever 
striving to pour himself through humanity as freely 
as he does through nature. We resist him. We 
beat back the Infinite truth and love. We close 
the valves through which he must enter. 



200 



The Two Harvests. 



Do you ever ask why there is so much evil, 
wretchedness, wrong, in the social world ? — why 
God does not stay it or cripple it or annihilate it, 
why he suffers it under his pure and loving eye ? 
I tell you, my troubled friend, God is trying to 
reach it. He can reach it only through human 
affection, human labor, human organization. When 
he makes a perfect apple it is not by dropping one 
from the skies, but by effusing his spirit through 
the substance of a tree made as the form for his 
life, and until the tree is ready the fruit must be 
delayed. And so God does not, perhaps we may 
say cannot, come immediately into society, into 
history, to grapple with evil. He must move 
against it by his charity through human hearts, 
the form of charity ; by his justice, through hu- 
man consciences ; by his truth, through human 
intellects ; by his energy, through human wills. 
Wave after wave, surge after surge, is beating con- 
tinually from the spiritual world at the doors of 
human nature to get through and sweep away 
wrong. We resist him. You and I, by our choice 
of ease, by our degraded passions, by our wrong 
use of money, by suffering the fires of aspiration 
to die out and do no work for lack of fuel, resist 
him, hold off his holy life from the world, bar up 
so many avenues through which he would strike 
at evil and displace it. 

" Behold I stand at the door and knock," is the 
keynote of his relations to humanity. In nature 
there is no sinful choice or will to stop him. In 



The Two Harvests. 



201 



us there is. That we have such a will is our glory, 
the stamp of our heavenly birth, the possibility of 
our sonship. That we use it so is our shame, 
guilt, and peril. And history moves slowly toward 
righteousness and social order, because the Infi- 
nite respects this capacity in us too highly to break 
it down, and so make us puppets of his pleasure, 
and because he can find no swift access through 
us to build up the kingdom of heaven on the over- 
throw of iniquity. 

A few days ago I saw in New York in a gallery 
of British art just opened, a picture by a living 
English painter, that illustrates this last and most 
serious suggestion of our subject, and which has 
been pronounced by a prominent critic " one of 
the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced 
in this or any other age." It represents Christ 
standing at the door of a cottage and knocking 
for entrance. In his left hand he bears a lantern 
— symbol of the conscience — that casts a red 
and ominous light. He is clad in a white tunic, 
emblem of purity and the power of the Spirit; 
over this a jewelled blue robe and breastplate, as 
the supreme priest of humanity ; and upon his 
head is the crown that proclaims him king of men, 
intertwined with thorns that have budded into 
healing leaves, and that spread an intense though 
serene splendor through the upper space of the 
picture. The brow is wide ; the eyes are solemn, 
sad, and tender ; the expression of the mouth is 
inexpressibly sweet and calm. Thus he stands 
9* 



202 



The Two Harvests. 



knocking at the cottage door, which is the artist's 
representation of the human heart. The door is 
shut. It is the avenue through which heavenly 
visitations must enter, and it has plainly been long 
closed, perhaps never opened since early child- 
hood. It is barred, and the bolts are rusty. 
Brambles have grown up thick and tall before it. 
Creeping tendrils of ivy have fastened on its stan- 
chions. A bat hovers around, showing that the 
air is dark and foul. Majesty, patience, and pity 
are in the countenance of the visitant who seeks 
to be a guest. Will the door be opened ? Will the 
prickly guards and the rusty fastenings give way 
in response to those solemn and gracious blows 
from eternity that should rouse the sleeper within ? 
That the picture does not tell us. That the face 
of Christ does not declare. He only stands and 
knocks. 

And so the Spirit stands at your door and mine. 
And so, it may be, the brambles greet its coming, 
showing that there are no free communications 
between our souls and heaven. And so the door 
may be locked, and tough briers may beset it, and 
the bats may flit about it, to tell that on the heav- 
enly side of our nature we have no day. And so 
it may have been year after year. While nature 
is open and orderly and bountiful, we may be 
growing more and more hostile to heaven and 
Christ by habit, shut up within ourselves, desolate 
and useless. If so, the condition we are in is 
the sermon, the appeal, the pleading, the warning. 



The Two Harvests. 203 

The Spirit's most solemn knock is this revelation 
to us of our state. Shall we go on thus listless, 
thus defiant of celestial pleadings, till earthly sea- 
sons shall draw to a close with us, till the cottage 
door and roof of our mortality shall fall and leave 
us in the open infinite, so that still it shall be 
true of us, " The harvest is past, the summer is 
ended, and we are not saved " ? 

1857. 



XIII. 



THE ORGAN AND ITS SYMBOLISM. 

" Praise him with stringed instruments and organs." — Psalms 
cl. 4. 

r I ^HE introduction of a new and excellent organ 



X into our church deserves more special and 
elaborate notice than we gave to it a few weeks ago, 
when its music made its first appeal to our hearts. 
To-day I intend to address you on the nobleness of 
the organ as an instrument of religious expression, 
and the symbolic lessons that are offered to us, 
through its structure, concerning spiritual truth 
and life. 

The Psalm from which the text is taken uses 
the word " organ " ; but the writer had no refer- 
ence to such an instrument as we have placed in 
our church. If the object thus designated could 
be brought before you, you would see a series of 
reeds, which the performer played upon by his 
mouth, — no more like the complicated structure 
before me than a minnow is like Leviathan. The 
true organ is a victory of far later skill. The 
Christian churches, probably, were not acquainted 
with it till the thirteenth century. And the op- 




The Organ and its Symbolism. 205 

portunity to have organs so freely in our houses of 
worship, and of so high an average of excellence, 
is a privilege which the last hundred years have 
given to Christendom. 

A grand organ is a work of art in a high sense, 
and represents, also, a long succession of ingenious 
triumphs over mechanical difficulties. When you 
listen to the smooth and rich combinations of tones 
poured out from several stops of our organ, and 
blending admirably into a massive surge of har- 
mony, it would greatly increase your appreciation 
of the music if you could have a sense of the 
complicated apparatus, and the slowly mounting 
triumphs of skill in its arrangement, by which the 
inspiring result is gained. The ordinary concep- 
tion of an organ is compounded simply of a bel- 
lows, some pipes, and keys. Of the mysteries of 
its construction we are most of us as ignorant 
as we are of its history. If we could all of us 
be made acquainted, to-day, with the methods by 
which all those 1,466 pipes are touched "to fine 
issues," — the skill with which the all-animating 
air, which they expire in melody, is supplied to 
them from the bellows, through the wind-trunks, 
into the air-chests, by the further aid of grooves 
and sound-boards and tables and sliders, and 
then by what cunning economy of pressure and 
spring the proper amount of breath is driven 
through each tube that is to be wakened into song; 
if we could know how the three organs of which 
every grand instrument is composed — the pedal, 



206 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

the choir organ, and the swell — are wrought into 
unity, how by couplings they can be made to play 
together at a single touch, and how the manuals 
and pedals have been prepared by dextrous ma- 
chinery for perfect action ; if we could learn by 
what repeated and nice experiments the best woods 
and metals had been discovered for the structure 
of pipes, and the finest combinations of the two 
kinds, and their proper length for different notes 
and for the best tones, and how new stops had 
been invented to increase the compass and refine 
the voice of the instrument, and what delicacy of 
taste is required, and has been exhibited, in blend- 
ing and balancing the songs of the different stops 
into a smooth chorus, kindred with the skill a 
master shows in harmonizing the colors of a pic- 
ture to a proper tone ; if we could, further, be 
made sensible of the patient talent that has been 
expended in contests with the disorders that seem 
to be connected of necessity with an instrument 
so bulky, complicated, and cumbrous, to prevent 
leakings, rattlings, unbidden sounds, creakings, 
and hoarse laborings of the machinery, and the 
scores of troubles which the changes of weather 
induce, and, beyond these, could be made aware 
of the difficulties that have been grappled, and the 
genius that has been put to use, in connection 
with the whole subject of temperament, tuning, 
and pitch of an organ, — we should see that we get 
our noble instrument, as we get all the richest 
blessings of civilization, out of the benefactions of 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 207 

centuries ; we should look upon it as a sign and 
summary of the dreams of scores of artists, and 
the adroitness of countless artisans; and the first 
lesson its music would breathe into our souls 
would be a new rendering of the words of Jesus, 
" Other men labored, and ye have entered into 
their labors." 

And yet the greatest marvel connected with an 
organ is, that genius makes itself felt through all 
the varieties and intricacies and unwillingness of 
its mechanism. It does not seem strange, when 
a man is blowing a bugle, or playing upon a harp 
that accompanies his song, that his soul should 
make itself felt through the metal and the strings. 
He comes into immediate connection with the in- 
strument, and we can understand how the greater 
depth or richness or delicacy of feeling of one 
performer should make itself manifest in contrast 
with another. But in the organ the performer is 
put at a great distance from his real instrument. 
The air is provided by unintelligent machinery. 
He touches dead keys with his fingers, and wooden 
springs with his feet, and they pull upon lines that 
open valves and let in air, according to fixed rules, 
to the pipes we hear. Yet think of the subtilty 
of those wooden springs, those cords, those slides 
and valves, in response to the quality of the touch 
whose bidding they serve. From the heart, from 
the intellect, from the passion, from the inmost 
soul of the artist the exquisite and inexpressible 
thrill is conveyed with the mechanical impulse 



2o8 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

that makes the pipes vocal, so that the tones tell 
you by their purity, their modulation, their tremu- 
lousness, their exultant soaring, or their pathetic 
cadence, the rank and quality of the feeling or the 
thought that has possession of the man whose fin- 
gers move the keys. I do not know any stronger 
testimony to the creative, and we may almost say 
miraculous, power of human genius in finding 
expression, than this fact that an organ, so en- 
cumbered with machinery which would seem to 
neutralize all delicate differences in the pressure 
on its keys and the pull upon its strings, is just as 
sensitive to the quality of the performer's touch 
as if his soul were directly breathing through the 
pipes. In how many ways does God try to tell us 
that this world is arranged by his wisdom as a 
scene for the expression of character ! This power 
of genius over matter, this responsiveness of metal 
and tube and string to the inmost emotion of the 
artist as well as to the coarser pressure of his 
hand, is only one branch of the greater law that 
all which we are publishes itself, that our secret 
quality tends to proclaim itself as from the house- 
top. As we are seen from the spiritual world, our 
latent quality, whether good or evil, is seen im- 
pressed on our conduct, breathes out upon the 
whole sphere that surrounds us. We play off 
our hidden music, whether vile or holy, upon the 
world. And this sensitive echo of the organ to 
the soul of the performer is only one variation 
of the mighty truth that undertones the govern- 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 209 

rnent of God, which it behooves us to meditate, and 
to apply to our states : " There is nothing secret 
which shall not be made manifest, neither anything 
hid which shall not be known and come abroad." 

But let us turn now from these niceties of 
artistic expression through the instrument to the 
general quality of the instrument itself. The 
merits of an organ are not to be spoken of with- 
out allusion to its defects. There is scarcely any 
instrument that in some narrow line is not its 
superior. In fineness and delicacy of tone and 
the capacity of expressing the most tender and 
subtle feeling, there is no portion of it which is 
comparable with the violin ; nor can any of its 
pipes breathe a melody so sweet as a perfect flute 
exhales. Its distinction, of course, lies in the 
complication of the voices that lie at the com- 
mand of its keys, and the vast range of its tones, 
from the thunder of the pedal to the piercing so- 
prano of the sesquialter. It is a whole band put 
at the service of a single will, while all the instru- 
ments, intoned by the common air, have a quality 
fundamentally kindred, so that they can be always 
kept in tune and time. And then its power of 
sustaining tones, and of swelling them as they are 
prolonged, distinguishes it as greatly from all other 
instruments in the possibility of producing grand 
effects as it is inferior to many others in its capacity 
for uttering refined and thrilling melody. For maj- 
esty it is the imperial instrument. The viol, the 
flute, the trumpet, the bugle, each is an organ of 

N 



2io The Organ and its Symbolism. 



music, but this is emphatically the organ. Let a 
man listen to one built up to the full resources of 
modern art, as it should pour out a chorus or an- 
them of Handel, a fugue of Bach, or the close of 
the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and how appli- 
cable, while his soul was heaving with the undula- 
tions thus inspired, would the language seem to 
the instrument which a poet of our own city used 
of Beethoven, — ■ 

" What a vast, majestic structure thou hast builded out of sound, 
With its high peak piercing heaven and its base deep under ground ! 
Vague as air, yet firm and real to the spiritual eye, 
Seamed with fire its cloudy bastions far away uplifted lie, 
Like those solemn shapes of thunder we behold at close of day, 
Piled upon the far horizon where the jagged lightnings play. 
Awful voices, as from Hades, thrill us, growling from its heart ; 
Sudden splendors blaze from out it, cleaving its black walls apart ; 
White-winged birds dart forth and vanish, singing as they pass 
from sight, 

Till at last it lifts, and 'neath it shows a field of amber light, 
Where some single star is shining, throbbing like a new-born thing, 
And the earth, all drenched in splendor, lets its happy voices sing." 

This majesty, thus native to the tone and move- 
ment of the organ, makes it pre-eminently the in- 
strument for religious expression. Many of the 
old organs intended for the churches of the Con- 
tinent were grotesquely ornamented with figures 
of angels bearing trumpets in their hands, some- 
times with kettle-drums that were beaten by the 
movable arms of angels, and now and then 
might be seen on one a gigantic angel hovering 
over the other forms, beating time with a baton. 
There are records, too, of organs on which the 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 2 1 1 

figure of King David, larger than life, was promi- 
nent, with an expression of joy on his face, play- 
ing the harp. Doubtless the cause of this repul- 
sive tawdriness was the undisciplined feeling that 
the organ is, by eminence, the ally of the Church, 
and the appropriate voice of the most profound 
and the most soaring sentiments inspired by re- 
ligion. Especially was there fitness in placing the 
rude effigy of David upon the casing of the in- 
strument. How would he have rejoiced if this 
musical mammoth had been known, in something 
like its present proportions, in his day ; if he 
could have said, in our sense of the term, " Praise 
Him with stringed instruments and organs " ; if, 
instead of the feeble harp to fan his poetic and 
pious glow when he retired to meditate on the 
sparkling wonders of the firmament, and to com- 
pare their eloquence about the Divine Presence to 
the melodious quiver of silver strings stretched 
across the night, or to celebrate the power of 
God shown in the shaking of the wilderness by 
the storm, or the influence that heaves and stills 
the sea, or the shooting of lightnings as coals of 
fire, and the bursting of the torrents upon the hill- 
sides when the foundations of the mountains were 
shaken because He was wroth, he could have 
seated himself in some retired chamber of his 
palace, at such an instrument as we have here to- 
day, and quickened, while he expressed, the holy 
passion that swept him through the responses to 
it from the colossal heart which he wakened by 



212 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

keys ! If this could have been, the Bible would 
be richer to-day in Psalms. There was no instru- 
ment — trumpet or sackbut or psaltery — which 
he did not bring into the temple and command to 
open its voice unto God. And if in his day an 
instrument so peculiarly pitched in unison with 
the reaches of thought and the vastnesses of feel- 
ing that pervade the principal Psalms could have 
been at his service in his creative moments, to 
stimulate and convey the emotion that strove 
within him, we may doubt if language could have 
borne the tumultuous heavings of his rapture or 
the mountings of his adoration. We may doubt 
whether we should not have had anthem-chords 
like those of Handel two thousand years before 
the time, and have received the Psalms on the 
mighty wings of harmonies born of the Spirit on 
Mount Zion. 

It is well that we have one instrument which 
belongs, by its very temperament and the rever- 
ence of its cadences, to the religious sentiment. 
And is it not suggestive when we find that it is the 
grandest of all instruments, the one which cen- 
turies have been widening and perfecting, that 
offers itself thus to religion, that moves as it were 
instinctively to the service of the church, that do- 
mesticates itself at once in the sanctuary ? Is it 
not a voice in favor of the reverence in things, a 
voice proclaiming the inherent and everlasting 
sanctity of music itself, a voice that ought to 
pierce the nature of every unconsecrated man, 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 213 

when we find that the moment we combine wood 
and metal and receptacles of air by such cunning 
and into such proportions as to make the most 
lordly of instruments, its rhythm and its motions 
are such that it refuses to be secular? Profane 
uses cannot handle it. It will not go to the bat- 
tle nor the dance nor the serenade. It asks for 
psalms and anthems, for masses and misereres. It 
is the holy Nazarite, and cannot leave the courts 
of the Lord. 

I have developed this point that you may pos- 
sibly be led to feel, as we all ought to feel, the 
privilege we enjoy in having, by the grace of 
genius in these later centuries, an instrument in 
our churches answering, through the complication 
of its structure and the range of its expression, 
to the majesty and breadth of the Bible itself, an 
instrument which seems to be the Bible recast 
into ranges of pipes, octaves sublime as though 
the book of Exodus were melted into music, and 
chords pathetic and yearning as the lament of 
Jesus over Jerusalem. And further, that the rev- 
erent and adoring quality and movement of its 
music may address us hereafter, as it prepares us 
for worship or helps us in devotion, with an ap- 
peal for religious living, as the only truth of the 
moral world, since God has made the natural 
world on such a plan, and intoned dead matter 
with such affinities, that the very breathings and 
vibrations of the air, in the chief instrument of 
music, have the spirit and measure of chants and 
hymns. 



214 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

The organ, moreover, to one familiar with its 
structure, and with an eye that readily seizes a 
symbol, suggests a valuable lesson concerning the 
diversities of the religious world. Every organ is 
composed of several series of pipes, each series 
being called a stop. The value of each stop is, 
that it breathes out and modulates, with more or 
less compass, a certain pervading quality of tone. 
Some stops cannot be played together without 
producing painful discord, so penetrative and total 
is their dissonance ; while, if a larger number are 
drawn, so that we get nearer to the full compass 
of the instrument, they broaden and enrich the 
harmony. 

Now, have we not here a noble language for 
expressing the structure and diversities, the uses 
and the service, of the parties and the literatures 
of the Christian Church ? The Church is one, 
like an organ ; it is diverse and broken, like the 
ranges of its pipes. The sects are its stops. 

I beg you to see, brethren, by an attentive con- 
sideration, that this is not a fancy, and that it is 
not merely speculative and unpractical. I beg 
you to see that the organ is able to help us to a 
principle that is just and generous, and that stim- 
ulates a wise charity. The Church universal lives 
by the breath of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy 
Spirit, sweeping into history from the infinite 
deep of God and making itself vocal in the litera- 
ture and life of Christendom, through consecrated 
minds and sanctified souls and beneficent hands. 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 215 

So broad is the current of the truth which first 
broke into our stagnant air over Palestine, and 
has been widening since upon the nations, that it 
wakens peculiar tones of every temperament, and 
strikes, as we may say, a fresh chord in every 
century. We cannot too often repeat that Chris- 
tianity is not a certain amount of religious truth 
locked up in a written record, but that it is a 
holy influence from the spiritual world, which 
struck one or two keynotes at its first coming, 
filling the soul of Jesus and a few Apostles with 
their melody, and which pours on to waken some 
new chord and variation in every nation and age. 
The true point in Scripture from which to survey 
it, and by which it should be interpreted, is the 
record of Pentecost, when the rushing mighty 
wind filled the house where the disciples gath- 
ered, and kindled such speech that men of various 
kingdoms heard each class in their own tongue. 

So it has been ever since. Out of various tem- 
peraments, which cannot coincide precisely in their 
tones, and which lie open by their structure to 
different modulations of religious truth, the Spirit 
evokes the voices which it needs. The sects are 
various stops in the organ of Christendom. Some 
are narrow in their range, and give us no sweep- 
ing, largely rounded literature. Some waken for 
us, when they are drawn, like the Methodist, the 
cheering gamut of grace. Some, like the Cal- 
vinists, shake the air with the mutterings of Infi- 
nite wrath and the thunderous vibrations of the 



2i 6 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

law. Some are the dulciana stops, that sprinkle 
sweetness and cheer, like sunshine, upon souls ; 
some are ranged for the mystic melodies that 
repeat the keynote of the Gospel of John ; and 
some, like the Universalists, are, in the structure 
of Christendom, like the viol-d'amour stop, that 
is so sweet in our own organ, repeating contin- 
ually the pathos and pleadings of Infinite love. 

Even the three great divisions of the Christian 
Church — the Catholic or Ritual, the Evangelical 
or Sacrificial, and the Spiritual, which includes all 
the branches of liberal Christianity — repeat the 
three separate organs — pedal, choir, and swell — 
that are blended to complete every full-toned in- 
strument. 

Still, I ask you to see that I am not led away 
by this analogy. Of course, I do not mean to 
assert that the hostile dogmas of different sects 
are necessary to the completeness and unity of 
Christian truth. A dozen intellectual contradic- 
tions cannot combine into catholic verity. But 
the sentiments which different churches stand 
for and work out, though they may be connected 
with doctrines that are utterly uncongenial, are 
essential to the fulness of religious truth and the 
complete compass of the Spirit in the Church. 
Churches and sects exist by and for the senti- 
ments they appeal to and feed. Their dogma is 
husk ; this is corn. I do not believe the Calvin- 
istic creed : perhaps no two consecutive or se- 
lected propositions of it coincide with the intel- 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 217 

lectual truth of heaven. But, brethren, there is a 
severity and stringency in the law of God and in 
its hold upon us, as solemn, as certain, as awful, 
as the hoarse sub-bass of Calvinism. It is not the 
whole music of Christendom, but it is the ground 
tone of the truth of things. If you say that it 
arbitrarily dooms a soul to eternal woe, you misin- 
terpret it ; if you strike it out from your concep- 
tion of life and the universe, you debilitate the 
Gospel, and strike out the pedal terrors, that, 
none the less for Christ's coming, roar around a 
deliberately evil career and character. So, too, 
there is truth in the love of God, his patient wait- 
ing, pleading, never-tiring love, sweet as the most 
cordial Universalism ever breathed. The Uni- 
versalists may be wrong at a thousand points in 
their rendering of texts, and their combination 
of proofs for their doctrine from Scripture; but in 
this sentiment, and in their faith that the love of 
God for each particular soul will last as long as 
his justice and as long as eternity, they are not 
wrong. Only both the truths must go together; 
the grace and the bass must interblend, one giv- 
ing body to the other, and one mellowing the 
other; neither must be hampered by fetters of 
time, or interpreted in regard to time, before you 
get the true harmony of the Spirit. Still further, 
there is a depravity in human life deep and 
dreadful as the plummet of Augustine sounded ; 
and there is glory in human nature high and 
lustrous as the vision that charmed the upward 
10 



218 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

gaze of Charming • there is a homely substance 
to all true religion which no moralist, wedded to 
the Epistle of James, can set forth too roughly, 
and there is a mystic truth in correspondences 
between the celestial and the visible world as 
penetrating and comprehensive as the Epistle to 
the Hebrews and the uncounted volumes of Swe- 
denborg would disclose. The intellectual settings 
may be inaccurate, but the spiritual truth, the 
sentiments they enclose, are right, and increase 
the compass of the Spirit in Christendom and the 
volume of its harmony. 

It is well to remember, in connection with this 
symbolism of the organ, that only those elements 
of the faith and life of every church which can 
pass up into noble anthems, chants, and hymns, 
which can be set to music, are its worthy and en- 
during elements. You cannot put proofs of the 
trinity or controversial supports of the unity of 
God, the arguments of Bishop Bull or the argu- 
ments of Professor Norton, into hymns. You 
cannot chant rubrics, and thirty-nine articles, and 
damnatory clauses of the Athanasian formula. 
But reverence for God, devout prostration before 
the law which " the Father " represents, love for 
the pity and sacrifice which " the Son " interprets, 
joy in the ever-present grace, and prayer for the 
quickening life, which "the Spirit" symbolizes, 
adoration of Infinite holiness, submission to Infi- 
nite sovereignty, grateful trust in Infinite love, — 
sentiments in which Trinitarian and Unitarian, 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 219 

Calvinist and Arminian, Partialist and Universal- 
is!:, come at once into fellowship, — these fly to 
music for expression. And this would be a good 
test of the breadth and richness of the faith of 
any sect, — how much of it could be lifted directly 
out of propositions and be better worked off into 
expression on an organ, and how much of the 
whole amplitude of the organ, from its rumbling 
ground-tier of pipes to its softest lute-vibrations 
would it call into play ? 

No sect can command the whole chromatic 
gamut which the Gospel sweeps. Here is the con- 
tinual call for chanty and humility and joy in the 
comprehensiveness of Christianity. It needs the 
full choir of churches for its expression. It can- 
not spare any stop in the organ-growth of history. 
Each new sect that endures is a new range of 
pipes, taking up a slighted sentiment, or working 
some more delicate tone or elaborate variation 
into the symphony of grace. We shall drop our 
intellectual differences about trinity and unity, 
free will and constraining grace, when we reach 
heaven. But we shall still be ranged, there as 
here, by the sentiments we most naturally give 
utterance to. We shall see then, doubtless, what 
need there is of the utmost power of every party 
to celebrate the circle of the Divine glory, how 
deep is the justice, how high the love, how wide 
the providence, that are twined into the pure har- 
mony of the heavenly hallelujah. 

I regret that time is not left me to develop the 



220 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

points of analogy between a man — each human 
soul — and an organ ; affinities that are no more 
interesting than they are impressive, practical, and 
searching. St. Paul compared the human soul to 
a temple, which was the grandest work of genius 
he knew ; and the highest value of any command- 
ing piece of art is to reflect back upon us some 
testimony to the complexity and marvel of our 
own constitution. 

There is not a person here whose spirit is not 
an unspeakably more intricate and delicate organ- 
ism than the instrument we are speaking of. 
Your powers, as related to the chief duties of life 
and the structure of society, are fitly represented 
by the sets of pipes in the organ. In every man 
there is the domestic stop, the business stop, the 
political stop, the religious stop. Some men do 
not show the fineness of their capacity till a par- 
ticular one of these is drawn and played alone. 
They are hard in trade, but genial and sweet at 
home ; or they honor integrity in their dealings, 
but do not support national loyalty to the highest 
truth in their votes and public influence ; or they 
are good citizens and good parents, but not rev- 
erent citizens of God's kingdom, the range of 
their religious affections being small and seldom 
waked into articulation. The true man is in tune 
through the whole series of his faculties, and will 
not suffer that any powers which God has wrought 
into his nature shall be closed against his Spirit 
and be wasted by disuse. 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 221 

Ah, brethren, we should call it desecration if 
the instrument that leads our choir should be pro- 
faned every Sunday by the touch of levity, waking 
only inane or frivolous music from its deeps. But 
how is it with us? What if God hears more 
Christian melody, more religious aspiration, more 
of the phrasings of humility and the soarings of 
devout joy, from that instrument than from us ? 
What if we are lower than that and are condemned 
by it ? What if it is our souls that are desecrated 
by successions of trivial thoughts, by frivolous 
habits, by impure passions, by unserviceable liv- 
ing, so that they send no music, comparable with 
that of this unconscious Cyclops, to the throne ? 

Every great theme leads at last, somehow, to 
him who gives us the stature of a perfect man, — 
to Jesus Christ. 

There is a singular legend connected with the 
village of Eusserthal in Switzerland, which takes 
its name from a convent that was once celebrated 
but has now completely disappeared. The choir 
of the convent church is, however, still left, and 
is used as a place of worship. Large stories are 
told in the village about the enormous wealth of 
the convent, especially about a certain golden 
organ that once stood in the church, and was 
played during divine service. When the convent 
was on one occasion attacked by enemies, the 
first care of the monks was to secure this treasure. 
They dragged it to a marsh which was formerly in 
the valley, and sank it as deep as they could. 



222 The Organ and its Symbolism. 

However, they had saved their treasure to no pur- 
pose, inasmuch as they were compelled to fly, and 
died in distant parts, while the convent fell to 
ruin. Every one is perfectly aware that the organ 
is still somewhere in the neighborhood of the 
church, but the precise spot where it lies is utterly 
unknown. Nevertheless, every seven years it rises 
out of the depths at midnight, and its sublime 
tones are heard in the distance. Nothing is at alL 
comparable to the gentle breathings of the golden 
pipes in the open air during the solemn stillness 
of night. Soon the soft tones swell into mighty 
billows of sound, which rush through the narrow 
valley, until the noise again subsides, and ends 
with a light echo in the forest. But no one has 
ventured to obtain a sight of the organist who 
holds the music in his power, and thus the discov- 
ery of the treasure is reserved for the future. So 
the Spirit of God once filled the avenues of our 
humanity in the soul of Jesus, mysteriously born, 
mysteriously taken from the world, — the golden 
organ of celestial truth and human capacity and 
Infinite love. And so, though buried deep by the 
thick selfishness and injustice of this world, that 
music once heard on the open day in far-off Pal- 
estine rises again and swells over the din of war, 
over crime, over slavery, over all hatreds and all 
wrong. We listen when its sweetness rolls thus, 
and rises and swells and sweeps, and we say, that 
is truth, that is religion, that is the music to which 
our souls were attuned in heaven. Strive and 



The Organ and its Symbolism. 223 

pray, my brother, to bring your soul into chord 
with it, that it may in part be repeated through 
you, and widened beyond you, so that you may do 
something to help the world come into harmony 
with it, so that the very mountains shall break 
forth into singing and all the valleys be filled with 
joy. 

1857. 



XIV. 



THE SUPREME -COURT DECISION * AND OUR 
DUTIES. 

" Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy." — 
Isaiah ix. 3. 

r I ^HE difference between national power and 



A national character, between the success and 
the worthiness of a state, is suggested at once by 
these words. Scientific insight shows us that a 
planet is under the dominion of the law of gravi- 
tation precisely as a pebble is ; and religious in- 
sight leads us to study the life, and estimate the 
merits and the perils, of an empire in the same light 
and by the same standards that we should apply 
to any single person. And so religious insight 
prevents us from accepting the mere numbers, the 
opulence, the prominence, and the power of a 
state as sufficient justification for joy in its exist- 
ence, just as it forbids us to acknowledge such 
tests for private persons. If a man is a sensualist, 
a knave, a gambler, or a ruffian, no honest mind 
thinks of praising him, or of calling him respect- 
able, because he is strong-limbed and in florid 




* In the case of Dred Scott. 



The Supreme-Court Decision. 225 



health, because he lives in a handsome house, 
is worth a million, and adds largely every year to 
his meadows and park. These splendid circum- 
stances only furnish a pedestal for a piece of 
incarnate depravity to make its vileness conspicu- 
ous and repulsive. And a nation may be vigorous 
in physical health, and may be gaining thus, while 
it is going backward and downward in character. 

The noble elements which a nation embodies 
and represents, and which gleam as expressions 
upon the lineaments which its countenance will 
wear in history, constitute its glory. Mere num- 
bers, as of the Chinese, Hindoos, or Turks, awaken 
no satisfaction in the competent student. 

The brawny energy that tugs at the conquest of 
nature ; that pushes out pioneers whose axes mow 
the wilderness, and whose ploughs furrow the 
prairies ; that quarries counties for coal, and tames 
the torrents for its wheels, and clamps state with 
state by iron, and plucks the pines for the masts 
of its "great ammirals," and makes the air over 
wide longitudes buzz with furious and cunning 
mechanism, — this, in contrast with lazy content 
or nerveless beggary, properly awakens joy in 
the aspect of a nation. And when, out of this 
groundwork of enthusiastic strength, an intellectual 
force is born that dots the land with schools, 
which lead up to academies, and in turn are 
crowned with colleges, from which literatures blos- 
som and shed the fragrance of culture and poetry 
in the social air, there is new and higher call for 
io* o 



226 The Sttpreme-Court Decision, 

satisfaction and gratitude. And if a religious 
spirit presses for utterance out of the widening 
life of the state, so that churches grow as nat- 
urally from its soil as court-rooms, capitols, and 
schools ; and if the religion of the people, in- 
stead of being a selfish commerce with infinite 
power for private insurance against suspected 
peril, is a reverent and glad recognition of the 
Infinite mind as the source of truth, and the In- 
finite heart as unspeakable love, and the church 
spires catch a life from heaven that runs into the 
deeps of the popular soul, quickening the general 
conscience, softening the common heart, kindling 
the national mind, so that, if poverty begins to 
border the general plenty, the national genius turns 
to study for the wisest relief of it by the quick 
impulse of duty, and when vice and crime burst to 
the surface the conscience of the state is moved 
as quickly to devise cures as to build prisons ; and 
if, as destitution and degradation and hostilities of 
class and race increase and deepen through the 
unskilful organization of interests, aptitudes, and 
property, the religious vitality still multiplies its 
help, in schools for the poor, and hospitals of 
every name, and organizations of reform, and per- 
sistent efforts for equal laws, and a spirit of 
humanity breathing fervid and pathetic through lit- 
erature, so that no toil of thought or heart is given 
over to resist the stealthy forces of wrong and de- 
cay from poisoning the springs of vigor, — then a 
spectacle is seen grander than any miracle of 



and our Duties. 227 



genius, any individual heroism, any personal sanc- 
tity; for then a nation stands out with intellect 
on its forehead, chivalry in its carriage, and Chris- 
tianity in its heart. 

The depravity of the world is shown in the 
difficulty of organizing any other than selfish ele- 
ments into the public dealings of nations. The 
divinity of the Gospel is sufficiently proved by 
its hope and its endeavor to institute humanity 
into one body, so that the kingdoms of this world 
shall become the kingdom of the Lord and his 
Christ. 

Turning from this general picture and this ideal 
glory to our own land and character, it will be fair 
to say that parts of our empire have been gaining 
in worthiness and dignity. I need not dwell at 
any length on the point that God has marvellously 
multiplied the nation even within an ordinary life- 
time, — how our area has broadened, how we have 
built States in less time than it has often taken to 
rear a palace ; how we have received races into 
our bosom, and distributed them by tens of thou- 
sands over our domain, without jar to the wide- 
spread peace ; how our wealth has increased by 
the rivalling contributions of the climates, and 
the chairs of our Senate-room represent the hardi- 
hood that defies the Atlantic storms and the golden 
lustre of the Pacific shores. 

No such inspiring spectacle is presented by the 
public life of any European kingdom, or any 
nation known to history, as the civilization and 



228 The Stipreme-Coiirt Decision, 

the prospects of several of the free States of this 
Republic present to a philosopher and a philan- 
thropist to-day. But the whole nation, the public 
life into which all the States are united, and which 
gives expression to the central government as other 
lands look upon us, does not deserve this decision. 
While its wealth and power have been waxing, its 
nobleness has been waning. " God has multiplied 
the nation, but not increased the joy." 

I will not speak especially of the lack of intel- 
lectual dignity in our politics, of the impossibility 
of getting a consistent policy, based on general 
economic principles, recognized in the regulation 
of our commercial affairs, or of the fact that the 
grade of talent in those who win success as repre- 
sentatives of the nation is steadily and swiftly 
sinking ; for our attention is called ralher to the 
more glaring and the more dispiriting proofs of it 
when we look at the principles which this people 
are called to represent before the world, and think 
of the treatment they receive from the central 
powers here. 

A lighthouse is not more manifestly built to 
bear aloft and protect a light, than the American 
polity was founded, reared, and cemented to en- 
shrine and diffuse a generous doctrine of the worth 
and the rights of human nature ; and a lighthouse 
no more fatally fails of its organic purpose when 
its upper windows are blackened, and it is used by 
one household for selfish convenience and private 
ends, than the American government fails of its 



and oily Duties. 



229 



Providential purpose if its political literature and 
spirit shed no blaze of cheer to other nations and 
over the stormy experience of history. 

The doctrine of the worth of human nature, 
and the wrong of social and instituted insult to it, 
was as solemnly committed to us as a people as 
the doctrine of one God to be worshipped by the 
holiness of life was committed to the Hebrews, to 
be worked out in their polity and their literature, 
and to be guarded and respected by the very 
mental instincts of their race, so that any offence 
offered to that doctrine should be an t offence 
against the personality of their state. And it 
should affect us with no more surprise and disgust 
to read of Samuel tampering with idols, or Elijah 
bowing to Baal for Philistine votes, or David writ- 
ing non-committal Psalms in balanced honor of 
Jehovah and Ashtaroth, or prophets keeping silent 
about public iniquity, and proclaiming the will of 
the reigning monarch as a higher law than the 
righteousness of the Lord of Hosts, than to think 
of the spirit of the American government flagging 
from the support of the civil sacredness of human 
nature, or of its literature, diplomatic and legal, 
failing to turn, like the awful sword-flame before 
Eden, as a watch and a terror against the pollution 
of that principle. 

[After recounting previous violations of liberty by the 
general government, the preacher proceeds to his arraign- 
ment of the Supreme Court.] 



230 The Supreme- Court Decision, 



Such is the dark story which the last few years 
tell as to the character of the central government, 
in relation to the sentiment which the personality 
of our empire should guard, as to the deepening 
scowls and hatred of its countenance at any gen- 
erous policy and literature of humanity. "God 
has multiplied the nation, but not increased the 
joy." 

And now, to crown these terrors, comes the 
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the 
country, a fitting cupola for the grim Bastile into 
which the moral insanity that has ruled us would 
convert our polity! 

One knows not where to turn in the dreadful 
circle of its infamy, where to begin the detail of 
its blackness. 

It is obvious that we must call it a deliberate 
creation of wrong and oppression. The most 
timid conservative can see that there was no ne- 
cessity for it in the Constitution or in our history. 
Would not this of itself be enough to blast it? 
Ought not a judgment so heinous morally, and 
contradictory to the legitimate sweep of the senti- 
ments that have inspired our noblest men, to be 
required so plainly by the language of the Con- 
stitution that no eye could fail to read the dread- 
ful duty of our highest court to expound it ? What 
then must we say when they have toiled to put 
it into shape, and to justify it by a show of logic 
and learning ? Fallen though these men were by 
the corrupting influence of the slave-system on 



and our Duties. 



231 



their passions and their reason, yet, like Milton's 
leaders of the angels banished from heaven, they 
did not descend to this pit by natural gravitation; 
they have "sunk by compulsion and laborious 
flight." 

Further than this, when the opposing decisions 
shall have been compared before the careful 
thought of the country, — the sinewy logic and 
symmetrical strength of that masterly paper which 
the genius of Massachusetts contributed,* with 
the tortuous pleading of the judgment which will 
now be the Magna Charta of tyranny, — it will be 
seen that our highest court has not only sunk by 
labor to that edict, but that they have spun it out 
of nothing, out of documents that do not hold 
it, and history that was never lived. It will be 
seen that they have perverted the life-elements 
of the Constitution to distil it, as the upas-tree 
perverts the pure moisture of heaven to sweat 
its blistering juices, or as the viper secretes from 
innocent food the poison of his fangs. These 
men, it will be clearly seen by the intellect of this 
land, have printed their passion, and that mental 
malignity which slavery engenders, over the para- 
graphs of the Constitution, and thus have startled 
us with nothing less than a coup d'etat. They 
have written a revolution. 

Only we must say that, as a work of oppression, 
this decision is more awful than any installation 
of despotism by any historic coup d'etat. It is 

* Mr. Justice Curtis's dissenting opinion. 



232 The Supreme-Court Decision, 

such a movement of oppression in Christendom as 
was never known before. It sweeps a race outside 
the privileges of national law by its decision that 
no black man, or man of African blood, can be a 
citizen of the United States under the provisions 
of the Constitution. And it makes no limit to its 
savage edict. It does not tell us what constitutes 
the black man, nor what constitutes the white. 
Another has well asked, " Where is the line be- 
tween shade deepening into shade, or sable pass- 
ing into the transparency of a veil of alabaster, 
so indistinguishable that the line between dark- 
ness and the first pale glimpses of the dawn might 
be easier mathematically whipped across the 
heavens ; where is the line that sets on the one 
side the inhabitant of the zone of darkness, as a 
creature only born to be enslaved, created to be 
mere property, a creature all merchandise, and 
the inhabitant of the other zone of whiteness as 
the rightful tyrant, possessor, owner, of the whole 
sable race as of a hogshead or a wheelbarrow ? " 
This decision, if it follows the principle of the 
slave-law, makes every child of a mother that has 
any mixture of African blood a portion of the 
African race, and so a civil pariah in the regard 
of the organized government and all its statutes. 
The freed children of Saxon fathers liberated by 
the tortured conscience of the parent, and en- 
dowed perhaps with Saxon energy in their veins, 
only pass from the justice of their paternal own- 
ers to be stamped with public infamy by the 



and our Duties. 



233 



broad seal of the United States Court. Rev. Mr. 
Pennington, a black clergyman of New York, 
formerly a slave, and educated abroad, whom a 
German university honored with a doctorate of 
philosophy and theology, can get no recognition 
from such a court that his learning and piety be- 
long to a human being. And Frederick Douglas, 
attested in his spiritual constitution as a noble- 
man of nature, and made pre-eminent, even among 
white men, by the endowment from Heaven of the 
sacred fire of genius, can have no passport as a 
son or citizen of America to carry with him to 
Europe ; must beg in vain for any pennant of the 
navy to flutter in his protection, or for any cannon 
to look a threat in his behalf, if an Austrian offi- 
cial should seize him, as Martin Kosta, an adopted 
white man, was protected in a foreign port ; yes, 
and if in any national hall of justice he should 
speak for any invaded right of his, with an elo- 
quence more than a match for any pleader of the 
State that once held him as a slave, he must retire 
before the breath of this decree, ostracized and 
outcast from even the cold notice of the law. 

A despot publishes his oppressive bull, but his 
whim may change ; his fears may be appealed to, 
and the next year he may revoke it. At any rate 
the grave is lying in wait for him, and his child or 
his successor may undo his mischief, and may be 
as noble as he is depraved. But woe when the 
spirit of evil, as the Psalm says, " frameth mis- 
chief by a law " ! That institutes and intrenches 



234 The Supreme-Court Decision, 

iniquity, organizing it into the fibres of state. 
And deeper woe when oppression, as in this rul- 
ing, goes back of even law itself; shows what 
laws shall be final ; lifts up the standard of oppres- 
sion in accordance with which alone laws shall 
be made \ drives its iron stake of tyranny, upon 
which, as fast as they may be engrossed by Con- 
gresses and signed by Presidents, the noblest laws 
enacting justice for a race shall be impaled as 
waste paper, lacking the American quality ! And 
crowning woe of all, when history and our ances- 
tors are vilified in order to draw from them the 
sanction for this horror ; when the judgment is 
so drafted that it shuffles behind the names of 
noble men, whose spirits it should seem might be 
evoked from heaven by the sorcery of such insult 
to blast them with indignation • when it skulks, as 
this judgment demonstrably does, behind a his- 
toric lie ! 

We are all startled now to see that we have an 
element of tyranny worked into our polity more 
subtle and vital, so long as the present constitu- 
tion of the Supreme Court shall hold, than any 
government of Europe shows. For in the Old 
World, if the seats of political authority are con- 
trolled by the will and conscience of the nation, 
everything is safe ; but here we have an impreg- 
nable breakwater in the passions of five men 
against a majority of millions, a united press, an 
overwhelming plurality of Congress, a unanimous 
Cabinet, and the seal of the President himself! 



and our Duties, 235 

And the conviction is burned into the heart of 
every American that this awful power is now to 
be exercised to jeer at the claim that a man with 
African color on his skin, though God has put 
genius in his brain and the Holy Spirit in his 
heart, and though New York or Massachusetts 
may welcome him and honor him as equal to any 
of the highest in its civil society, can be fit to 
stand with a naturalized Irishman or a desperado 
from the Five Points as a claimant for equity in 
the imperial courts of the Republic ! 

Must we not say before Heaven, " Thou hast 
multiplied the nation, but not increased the joy," 
when we think that such an edict is supreme over 
our literature ? The slave-system has been work- 
ing through years for foothold in literature in the 
hope of finding rhetoric and logic to hurl back 
against the general derision and hiss of genius. 
It has been able to command no history, no politi- 
cal economy, no poetry, no fiction that is respect- 
able ; but it has triumphed by planting its banner 
over the supreme tribunal of the national mind. 
Every intellectual man feels now that this streamer 
floats over the national thought. And we can fore- 
cast the way in which it will work on the senti- 
ments and character of thousands ; how it will 
paralyze noble sentiment in them and drain off 
the moral fluids from their nature, and make them 
accept it for the sake of place, and turn them into 
mere governmental muscles, and whip them be- 
yond the point of sorrowful and external acknowl- 



236 The Supreme- Court Decision, 

edgment that it is law, until reversed, into a pas- 
sionate and jubilant defence of it. For the slave- 
system works on minds in our politics just as 
slavery works on the soil : it sucks the generous 
juices out of it, withers it, dries it into sand, and 
leaves it fit only for nettles and weeds. 

And now Providence sets this decision before 
us to try our religious state, to test the thorough- 
ness of our consecration, to ask what we are ready 
to do about it. I could not have chosen any 
other theme for a public and a Christian fast-day; 
for there is no public sin of recent manifestation 
so suggestive and frightful as this eruption of evil 
out of the constitutional blood of the country, 
there is no symptom that shows more vividly the 
moral vice that we have been pampering in the 
public soul, and there is no question that will probe 
the vitality of the Christian forces of life in a state 
like a question involving antipathies of race. 

We are called now to meet politically, in the 
light of Christianity, the problem with which early 
Christianity itself was set to wrestle. Our relig- 
ion came into the world a proclamation of uni- 
versal spiritual liberty and love. But the Jewish 
race, to whom it was intrusted, had pronounced 
by their supreme Pharisaic courts that all other 
races were alien, and that, in the regard of their 
fathers, the Gentiles had no rights which a He- 
brew was bound to respect. And so the Jewish 
Christians refused, at first, to receive alien converts 
to equal citizenship in the Church and to think 



and our Duties. 237 



of them as equal with themselves in the regard 
of Heaven. The regular Apostles themselves, 
the supreme judges in the Christian community, 
came near yielding to this prejudice, and certainly 
opposed it with no passion. But Paul stood for 
the outcast nations. The Gospel is not worth 
saving, he said, if it is not broad enough to re- 
deem all the spirits God has created ; if, while sin 
is not local, and misery is not local, and death is 
not Jewish, the Gospel, which strives to reverse 
these, cannot flow as widely with its medicine as 
they flow with their taint. And so he translated 
it into the universal dialect, and made the selfish 
language of the world thrill with that sentence, — 
" There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither 
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, 
but all are one in Christ Jesus." 

That movement and that sentence of the Apos- 
tle is the fulcrum by which the thought of Jesus 
gets its purchase historically against this decision 
of our political pharisaism. The same test in 
principle is put before our minds and consciences 
in this question of race that was set before early 
Christianity, that our religion may be healthy, and 
that our prophetic insight may not die into moral 
blindness and apathy. No mean nation is called 
to organize a root-principle of the celestial order 
into its life. We can see the estimate which Prov- 
idence puts on this country in the fact that, de- 
spite our sin and apostasy, he still offers to us the 
supreme privilege and honor of winning back that 



238 The Supreme -Court Decision, 

principle of the equality of races, and of enthron- 
ing it deliberately in our Constitution, after Anti- 
christ has challenged battle around it by tearing 
it from our charter and traditions, and trampling 
it under his hoof. 

Our duty then is, first, to see that Christianity 
is vitally interested in this struggle against our 
Supreme Court, and to feel the solemnity of this 
fact, that we are not a Christian but a heathen 
nation, if we suffer the recent ruling to get seated 
as law over the mind and conscience of this land. 
And so we are to see to it that the Church senti- 
ment is arrayed against it wherever there is a free 
Church, a Church founded on the cross and the 
book of Romans, and not on the curse of Canaan 
by Noah, and the bills of sale to Abraham of 
slaves. We are to hate it and to loathe it as athe- 
ism and blasphemy. We are to hate it as loyal 
to our history ; hate it from love of the truth 
which it perverts, and out of reverence to the 
sainted men whose fame it pollutes in claiming 
their sanction ; hate it as Americans and patriots, 
for the infamy it brands into the brow of our na- 
tion in the regard of foreign lands ; and hate it 
with consecrated passion as Christians, in the feel- 
ing that, if the religious sentiment gets bowed to 
indifference to it, we have, from that moment, a 
union of Church and State here more revolting 
than the Russian, and may as well print our Tes- 
taments at intervals, with codicils from our na- 
tional judges, showing what, according to the last 



and our Duties. 



239 



exigency of the slave system, is everlasting truth. 
Grounded in this spiritual opposition, we are to 
cultivate the expansive and redeeming forces in 
our society. In the unconsecrated blood of the 
country this decision will work like the virus of a 
rattlesnake. We are to meet it with stimulants, 
knowing that if the sedative reaches the heart it 
is death. 

The Latin poet, Virgil, has drawn a vivid pic- 
ture of one of the scenes which hastened the fall 
of ancient Troy. The noble Trojan priest, Laoc- 
oon, denounced the infatuation of his country- 
men, when they determined to receive the mon- 
strous wooden horse, stuffed with Greek troops 
and princes, into the city. He tried every means 
to rouse his countrymen to a sense of their peril, 
and at last hurled his spear against the hollow 
fraud. But, lest his passion might be effective, 
the hostile gods that helped the Greeks sent two 
snakes over the sea from Tenedos, with crests 
dropping blood, and quivering tongues that licked 
their hissing mouths. They made their way in 
the city at once to Laocoon and his sons, wound 
themselves in frightful festoons around their limbs, 
bound them in a group of agony which sculpture 
has made immortal, crushed and choked them, 
and reared their crests and poisonous tongues 
over the brow of the patriotic priest, whose chap- 
let was black with their poison and red with his 
own death. 

Thus the church of Troy was silenced ; the ser- 



240 The Supreme -Court Decision, 

pents nestled safe under the buckler of the god- 
dess in the sanctuary ; the wooden horse was ad- 
mitted, and that night Troy was in flames. 

The snakes of Tenedos are after the Church of 
America to-day. They are winding around the 
Bible and the pulpit and the press. We are in 
the midst of the Laocoon-wrestle between our 
Christian principle and the sinewy pressure and 
coil of that slimy sentiment which puts forms of 
law above its essence, transparent iniquity, with a 
judge's seal to it, over unofficial truth with God's 
stamp upon it, which would divorce religion and 
humanity, though they have been welded to indis- 
tinguishable sanctity in the heart of Christ, and 
would crush out the breath of the New Testament 
by the constriction of a dozen misinterpreted texts. 

If the arms of the Church are not able to throw 
off these hideous anacondas, that its prophetic 
spirit may stamp their heads into the dust ; if the 
parable of the good Samaritan and the spirit of 
humanity glowing in the fire-drawn picture of the 
king in judgment, do not rise demonstrably victo- 
rious over this literature of hell, we have no Church 
and no Church sentiment. Jesus is dead, the 
church spires are his monuments, and Northern 
Christendom is a graveyard. 

Of political methods of resistance this is not 
the place to speak. I agree with his Excellency 
that ministers should not mix with political dis- 
cussions. It is when civilization is at stake, and 
Christianity is impeached in high places, that they 



and our Duties. 



241 



have the call to speak, and then not for party, but 
for religious ends. 

And so I will pass over political methods to 
say that, if we are honest in our denunciation of 
this decision, we must respect the black man, rec- 
ognize him as a brother, be ready to help him 
elevate himself in Northern society, plead against 
the disabilities that fetter him, pay the reverence 
to him which is due to the victim of arrogant tyr- 
anny, and feel that the contempt for him which 
vents itself in the corruption of the word "negro" 
to palliate any of the wrongs of his race is con- 
spiracy with the heathenism of this decision we 
denounce, a public support of it, and a sin against 
Christ. 

And lastly, and for our own souls chiefly, that 
we may be found contending with the strength of 
character and by the might of the Holy Spirit 
against all instituted wrong and against the invisi- 
ble essence of wrong itself, we must keep our 
hearts open to charity, and earnest in prayer, and 
docile to Jesus Christ, that our sorrows and fast- 
ings of the spirit may avail in heaven, and that 
our supplications for our country may be pure 
enough to win from Infinite Grace more of that 
life into the land which, while it multiplies the 
nation, increases the joy. 

1857. 



11 



r 



XV. 



LIVING FOR IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES. 



" But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for 
Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the ex- 
cellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." — Philip- 
fiians iii. 7, 8. 



HE truth at the heart of this passage is, that 



X St. Paul lived for an idea and a cause. 
Christ represented to him the sublime fact that 
God is unspeakable goodness ; that he desires to 
be worshipped, not by slavish and wearisome ser- 
vices, but out of a filial and joyous heart ; and 
that life is offered to men as a condition of spirit- 
ual freedom and immeasurable bliss. Whenever 
the word " Christ " was written or spoken by the 
Apostle Paul, his imagination was fired with the 
conception that the love of the Infinite God had 
been expressed in a human person and a life with 
which we can come into quickening sympathy ; 
and this fact was so much richer to him, and so 
much more inspiring, than all the beauty of the 
world, than all the pleasures and honors of so- 
ciety, that he counted all other things as loss 
before the glory of believing in it, cherishing it as 
a hope, and publishing it to the world. He gave 




Living for Ideas and Principles. 243 

up the good opinion of his nation, the fellowship 
of his family, the prospect of honor and wealth, 
and cast in his lot with a despised and perse- 
cuted sect, that he might have the satisfaction 
and the joy of living for a truth that outweighed 
the world. 

I beg you, now, to see how harmonious this 
law, which the Apostle's life illustrates, is with all 
the indications in the natural world. See how 
things are accounted noble just as they intimate 
to us, or represent and illustrate, principles. A 
grain of matter is grand when we think that it is 
under the dominion of the law of gravitation, and 
publishes it just as faithfully as any planet that 
whirls in space. A piece of common quartz is 
worth nothing by market estimates to a natural- 
ist ; but tell him that by cutting it to pieces, or 
by searching it with a microscope, he can detect 
the secret of the force of crystallization, and how 
the particles of matter shoot themselves into reg- 
ular shape and become transparent, and he will 
prize that piece of common stone more than if it 
were a lump of gold. A loadstone is nothing 
other than a common rock to a philosopher, until 
you intimate that it is alive with magnetic quali- 
ties that girdle the globe. A triangular piece of 
glass, utterly valueless in itself, becomes at once 
a most precious treasure to the scientific student 
when he finds that with it he can paint his walls 
with rainbow hues, and untwist at pleasure the 
charming tints that are braided into a beam of 



244 Living for Ideas and Principles. 

light. The philosopher learns, at last, to stand 
in reverence before the common facts, which we 
consider empty of meaning, by seeing that there 
is nothing in the universe that is not intrusted, 
by the Infinite mind, with some great principle, 
which it whispers to the reverent student. Some- 
times a fossil or a pebble is the clew which leads 
to a broad system of geological truth. 

We ought to see that this law applies with far 
higher force to men. We ought to see that if a 
piece of matter is valuable, in the world of truth 
and science, only by reason of the principles 
enshrined in it, a human being is to be estimated 
in no other way than by the spiritual principle he 
stands for, the moral and vital truth that threads 
him. 

What does a man stand for ? This is the ques- 
tion that probes the real value attaching to him ; 
because this shows how faithful he has been to 
the privilege of his humanity, and how much fel- 
lowship he has with God. We are not to ask, as 
this world asks, " How much is a man worth ? " to 
get an answer in dollars ; we are not to ask what 
the grade of his living is, the splendor of his 
house, the scale of his expenses, as though we 
could test in that way his essential value. The 
spiritual method of finding what a man is worth 
is to inquire what is the moral skeleton or frame- 
work of his career, and what purposes he is living 
for ; to search for the central sentiments he lives 
by ; to knock upon the substance of his soul, and 



Living for Ideas and Principles. 245 

find whether he rings hollow, or if the music of 
some everlasting principle thrills out of him. 

Every man does represent a principle, either 
a mean one or a noble one, and by that he is 
estimated in the spiritual world. How inspiring 
it is when we see men that are the reverse essen- 
tially of those we have been obliged to describe ! 
Now and then you see a human being that is not 
so much obedient to a principle as the personifi- 
cation of a principle. He is the law of justice 
walking among us and baptized with a Christian 
name. You feel not only that he tells the truth, 
but that he could not articulate a falsehood. 
Honor is so ingrained in him that the Custom 
House would shake itself clear of the force of 
gravitation as soon as he could bring himself to 
swear to a deceitful invoice. His word is as good 
as his bond, for both are simply the pledges of 
his character. His dealing with a man in trade 
is virtually a sacrament ; and though he " prom- 
ise to his loss, he makes his promise good," 
because he feels that there can be no loss that 
will compare with central degradation. Such a 
man is incapable of putting anything — money 
or station or ease or fame — in comparison 
with an eternal verity, such as right, truth, the 
spirit of humanity. If he is in politics, and the 
way should be open for him, broad and sunlit, to 
the White House, he would no more set out upon 
it than if it were paved with living vipers, if he 
must tread over the prostrate spirit of freedom in 



246 Living for Ideas a,7id Principles. 

reaching that eminence, though cheers and music 
from twenty States should fill his ears on the 
path. If he has money, he knows that he is not 
made up of money ; that he is built up of brain, 
conscience, heart, and will • and that the only eter- 
nal value of his money lies in its being an imple- 
ment of his nobler nature, — seeds of truth, bless- 
ings in poor homes, foundation-stones of institu- 
tions that send out warmth into the world's frosty 
air. If he is your friend, his courtesy is the ex- 
pression of his inmost feeling ; he is the friend of 
your nature, not of your purse, house, or dinner- 
table ; and misfortune only brings him closer to 
you, because there is less of this world's drapery 
to keep him from intimate communion with your 
heart. 

Such men count all things as loss for the excel- 
lency of principles. They have taken truth, the 
most sacred truth, into their substance. Their 
blood is no more the current and treasury of their 
physical life than the spirit of God, the element 
of all human virtue, is the life-stream of their 
souls. They do not simply conform to the morali- 
ties and gentilities and proprieties which are the 
common law of society, but they are truth, kind- 
liness, charity, intrenched in flesh, fortified by 
bone, animating blood, using speech and influ- 
ence, and wealth perhaps, as signs of their pres- 
ence and sway. 

And such persons, brethren, succeed in life, 
because they fulfil the privilege of their humanity. 



Living for Ideas and Principles. 247 

They import and impersonate something noble 
and everlasting, that makes them practically and 
visibly the sons of God. And they are sermons 
to us. We are bound to live in such ways as 
they do, for an idea, a truth, a spirit. Just as the 
scientific man is interested in common things for 
the law they suggest, just as the artist seeks in all 
common things their beauty, which he tries to 
copy, you are called, and are bound as moral 
beings, as Christians, to be interested in your 
home, your work, your temptations, your money, 
your means of influence, for the good that is 
possible in them, that is suggested to your con- 
science, and that would gleam more plainly before 
you if you were more faithful in the training of 
your moral sentiments, more careful to keep them 
submitted to the eye and breathings of God. 

This, therefore, is our chief obligation, — to 
see where a principle can be brought into any 
portion of our life that is vacant of it or hostile 
to it now. Where can the order of conscience 
be breathed into districts of life that lie lawless ? 
Are there not some dangerous or degrading pleas- 
ures that can be swept out of the soul's domain 
by a will brought up to more constant loyalty ? 
Are there no slothful habits, rusting usefulness 
away, that need to be corrected, and that can be 
by the systematic effort to invite and domesticate 
moral energy in the soul ? Is integrity honored 
and commended as it might be in your business 
and toil, so that, as a clerk, a mechanic, or a 



248 Living for Ideas and Principles. 

merchant, your service and your dealings are 
transparent with the light of fidelity and honor ? 
Is there no way in which your thoughts and 
imagination can be refined to a more steady or 
delicate purity ; no way in which you can make 
your relations to your companions bear testimony 
to a more cordial and graceful friendship ; no 
way open for larger self-denial, so that you may 
have ampler means and a more earnest disposi- 
tion to help the needy, and so to spread the light 
and cheer and charm of charity through your 
experience ; no opportunity for you to stream a 
sweeter temper through your home ? Above all, 
can you not see how a deeper spirit of personal 
piety may be diffused through your mind and 
heart, so that you shall be more grateful for your 
blessings, more penitent for your sins, more devout 
towards the Infinite Majesty, more trustful in the 
Boundless Love ? 

Who is there of us that, as these questions are 
asked and flash upon our lives, does not see, in a 
moment, how poor and coarse we are compared 
with what we might be, and how near the holiest 
principles are to our work and our will ? Our 
call is, brethren, to fetch these principles into our 
daily deeds at any expense, so that our lives will 
radiate them. We are to count everything we 
may have to give up, any toil of self-discipline 
we may have to undergo in that work, as loss and 
dross for the excellency of their righteousness. 
Thus we rise into fellowship with Paul. It is 



Living for Ideas and Principles. 249 



your business and my business to do this work, 
just as much as it was Paul's to throw aside 
every hindrance to his devotion to the Gospel, 
and to give up everything that would make him a 
less zealous and potent missionary. 

It is not abstract principles defended by the 
mind and published by paper that help or save 
the world, but principles incarnate, looking through 
human eyes, using human speech, moving in 
homes, trading in stores, eloquent in caucuses 
and senate-rooms, signing subscription-papers, 
and scattering gold. We are to call them down 
from their diffusion in the spiritual air, and fortify 
them by our bosoms and our blood. There is no 
end to the work and the service we may do in 
perfecting ourselves, so that celestial ideas and 
the spirit of the Gospel may live in us, and be 
published anew as " the Word made flesh." It is 
said that opaque objects can be charged so thor- 
oughly with electricity that they will become trans- 
parent. And certainly common actions may be 
made to glow with the sparks and stream of 
divine truth, so that their value will lie in their 
quality and not their scale. 

" All may of thee partake ; 
Nothing can be so mean, 
Which with his tincture, for thy sake, 
Will not grow bright and clean. 

" A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, ' 
Makes that and th' action fine." 



250 Living for Ideas and Principles. 

The only use of time is in bringing the heart 
into partnership with these principles, and thus 
rising into fellowship with God. As the Em- 
peror Titus said, " I have lost a day," when he 
could think of no good action he had done during 
the sun's circuit, we must judge ourselves in the 
blaze of the fact that every day is lost, according 
to the heavenly notation, that has not been en- 
nobled and spiritualized by the exercise of some 
moral and celestial quality, either in restraining 
passion, or doing something, or giving something, 
or cherishing some devout sentiment, so that a 
truth, a principle, has become a more ready guest, 
through us, in this world of conflict and sin. 

We have considered the subject thus far chiefly 
from the point of duty. But it is not complete 
until we listen to what it has to say to us from the 
side of resource. A human being was made to 
give room to ideas, to stand for them, to diffuse 
their heat and light from his personality, and also 
to be supported by them, rejoice in them, and live 
in their atmosphere more than in that of the 
world. These are what we need, friends, more 
than any temporal possessions, these are what 
make us really rich and noble, and our lot really 
enviable, — great principles as lights, counsellors, 
comforts, and companions. What we need in ad- 
versity is an idea, as part of our being, intertwined 
with our feelings, that God is just as much revealed 
in trials as in blessing; that his goodness is 
shown in putting our moral fibre to hard tasks 



Living for Ideas and Principles. 251 

that will make it athletic, and so make us perma- 
nently nobler, as the teacher's friendship is shown 
in putting the scholar to a tough lesson that makes 
the mind sinewy and wise. With that principle 
as part of our spiritual constitution we triumph 
over adversities, because the soul lives with God. 
When evil seems to gain wider sway, we can be 
calm and strong if we have the idea, as a broad 
rich light around us, that God is stronger than 
evil, and is unspeakably more opposed to it than 
we are, and completely committed, now and for- 
ever, to the good. When our friends die, and 
when death is beginning to mix its shadows with 
our own air, we are thrice armed against it, we 
utterly conquer it, by seeing that there is no death 
if we have the Christian principle in our souls 
that this life is the threshold of a great future. 

A man without ideas like these, destitute of 
principles that give a cheering hue to life, and 
which are part of the substance of his soul, 
doomed to face the dark problems of Providence 
at some time, and meeting them only with a soul 
in eclipse — what difference does it make in his 
condition to say he has gold, he has a fine house, 
he has a luxurious table, he has a great name, he 
has civil power ? He is to be pitied ; angels see 
how sad his lot is ; Christ mourns for him ; God 
yearns over him, because he is poor, penniless, in 
his immortal nature, because he does not hold 
to anything with his mind and heart, because he 
does not own anything in his personal right, for 



252 Living for Ideas and Principles. 

the gain and excellency of which he counts all 
other things as loss. 

Consecration, service of righteous truth, is the 
door to this possession of it as a resource which 
fills the soul with peace. Paul counted all tem- 
poral good as loss for the excellency of Christ in 
his fidelity, and then he soon learned to see that 
they were beggarly indeed in comparison with 
what he gained in spite of persecution. He gave 
up the prospect of being a priest in Jerusalem, 
and he saw the world as a temple over which God's 
sanctity ever broods, and in which every spirit 
may be a priest. What was the friendship of the 
rabbis which he yielded to the deeper sympathy 
with the prophets which he gained ? What was 
the toil of tent-making and journeying which he 
underwent, compared with the mystic melodies 
that breathed around the frail awnings of his mor- 
tal frame, and the ecstasy in which his new faith 
poised his spirit above the world ? What was the 
sullen hostility of the whole Roman Empire when 
he saw how thin were the partition walls between 
this world and the infinite light, and could look 
through their alabaster veils to the cloud of wit- 
nesses, and the Christ that died for all the world, 
and God shrouded in the glory of his love, and 
know that they were regarding him with interest, 
approval, and joy ? 

He could not have had these visions in the 
landscape of his soul, unless he had sacrificed 
earthly good that stood in the way of consecra- 



Living for Ideas and Principles. 253 

tion. And we, too, can have such infinite pay- 
ment for finite loss. Make a principle a guest in 
your heart, — by denying the worldly side of your 
nature, by fettering passion, conquering pride, liv- 
ing for something other than luxury, using money 
for good, drilling the will to loyalty, — and it will 
become thus an immeasurable gain as a resource 
to your soul. God bends a boundless and spark- 
ling sky over our heads ; but he offers a deeper 
heaven, filled with more glorious lights and diviner 
promise, to all souls that will welcome a principle, 
go out and pitch their tent in the moral universe, 
and live here for him. 

1856. 



XVI. 



THE HEART, AND THE ISSUES OF LIFE. 

" Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the issues 
of life." — Proverbs iv. 23. 

T T OW broad and impressive the declaration 



heart of man ! The highest region of religious 
truth is full of paradoxes. How striking is this, 
that we are receiving all the time our life from 
God, and yet what we are essentially determines 
what life is ! We are finite and feeble ; we can- 
not create so much as a pebble or a weed j and 
yet our quality gives color and quality to all that 
Heaven does for us, so that we re-create the 
world in our likeness. We have no power to 
exist of ourselves a moment, — God is the sub- 
stance of our being • yet we can pervert the life 
of God, as soon as it touches us, into the life of 
hell, and it is we that determine the universe in 
which we exist. 

Out of the heart are the issues of life. Each 
person here is a centre from which the universe 
radiates. There is a light in each one of you? 
which, streaming outward, mixes with the exterior 




within, from the 



The Hearty and the Issues of L ife. 255 

light, and is more important than that in giving 
the complexion to your world. Your inmost 
state is felt by the farthest star and by the nearest 
blade of grass. It stains every object you see, 
and every fact of your experience. Perhaps it 
brightens and glorifies everything. Perhaps it re- 
veals to you the terrible yet simple meaning of 
those words, — "If the light that is in thee be 
darkness, how great is that darkness ! " 

In its elements and outward scenery nature is 
the same to all. Light and night, sun and stars, 
air and earth and landscapes, offer a common en- 
closure and background to our existence. But 
the various impulses and aptitudes for work with 
which we are born — which press from the very 
core of our being — diversify the world as widely 
as if we were distributed upon different globes. 
To one set of men it is a place to think and 
learn and grow wise in. Everything God has 
made is a challenge to their intellectual curiosity. 
They untwist the light ; they analyze the air ; they 
tear up the carpets of the planet and bore into 
its floors ; they weigh the orbs of space ; they 
run their measuring lines across the heavens. 
The thirst for knowledge, which is their central 
passion, projects the universe as an academy 
whose facts are pages to be deciphered, and in 
which success is to be measured by the wisdom 
that is gained. 

Another finds the world a place to work in. 
The sun is admirable to furnish light for his labor: 



256 The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 

the night fulfils its purpose in giving him rest. 
How many there are to whom this globe is an 
ant-hill, where each inhabitant must tug at his 
burden, that it may be mined and stored and 
filled up into more subtile and wide convenience 
for the generations to come ! 

Others find it a garden of beauty in which the 
stars are more valuable as blossoms of poetic 
light than for their astronomic truth, and the air 
richer for its hues than for its uses, and the 
mountains grander for their millinery of mist and 
shadow and their draperies of verdure and snow 
than for their service to the climates and house- 
keeping of nations. 

Still others see the world as a place to trade in 
and grow rich, — a gorge between gold moun- 
tains, where they must quarry, and crush, and 
perhaps sift mud for gold-dust, or set up their 
booth to traffic with the miners, while the swift 
day lasts, for the bagful to support them during 
the evening, and to leave to others when they go 
to sleep. 

Or it is a pleasure-ground for giddy or elegant 
enjoyment ; or it is a scene of struggling pas- 
sions, where the ambitious will must wrestle and 
push and trample, possibly for a forward position, 
or a seat of authority and fame. 

It is plain, therefore, that our natural bent in 
the line of work does a great deal to impress a 
character upon the universe. Even when no 
moral quality is involved, we see how life gets 



The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 257 

coined at our mint, so that the world, God's 
world, somehow wears the stamp of the die cut 
into our heart. All this belongs as commentary 
to the proverb I have taken for a text. 

And temperament, natural temperament, has 
an effect on life that must be considered for a 
moment in this connection. The Almighty would 
have to create an intenser sunshine for the grave 
and melancholy man, if he would make the world 
seem as radiant to him as it does to a person 
blessed with an organically cheerful mood. Some 
people seem to carry extra sheaves of sunbeams 
in their bosom, and carols of birds, and sweet 
tints of verdure, which they shed into the air and 
sprinkle over nature. If a man has a music-box 
in his heart, the pulse of the sun will seem to 
beat with it, and the trees to throb and bud with 
its melody. If his bosom is strung as an ^Eolian 
harp, nature will be full of weird and sad ca- 
dences. 

You know how experience, also, interprets the 
same principle, even in cases where moral con- 
siderations are not prominent. You know how a 
piece of good fortune brightens the air, how pros- 
perous hours make the globe buoyant, how some 
impending evil puts the edge of a spiritual eclipse 
upon the sun as solemnly as the shadow of the 
moon settles on its burning disc, how suddenly 
ill-fortune in business will seem to make the very 
springs of beauty bankrupt, how the sickness of a 
dear friend turns nature pallid, how the death of 

Q 



258 The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 

wife, husband, or child will convert all the trees 
to cypress, and set the music of nature in a minor 
key, as a dirge or requiem. 

All these facts, which belong rather to the mar- 
gin of our subject, enforce the duty of "keeping 
the heart." For though aptitudes, temperaments, 
and moods have much to do with the tone and 
quality of our life, states have more. A dark 
moral state stretches a permanent veil of cloud 
over the heart, that thins and chills all the light, 
while a mood or a sorrow may sail only like the 
swift blackness of a shower through our air. And 
we can do a great deal to control the moral states 
of the heart ; we are responsible for them. 

Every person is exposed to some particular vice 
or passion which strives to gnaw its way into the 
core of character, to be seated there. You are 
not responsible for your constitutional exposures, 
but you are for the treatment you give yourself in 
view of that exposure. This makes the solemnity 
of the Scriptural injunction to guard against the 
"sin that easily besets us." If we do not fight 
with it, we become possessed by it at last, and our 
whole experience gets flavored with it. Some one 
of you may lie so exposed, by constitutional weak- 
ness, to envy, that it is your call to keep the heart 
with all diligence against it. What a pitiable and 
dreadful thing it is when the heart has become so 
corroded by that form of selfishness that it can- 
not feel generous pleasure in seeing the prosper- 
ity, the rising position, the increasing happiness, 



The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 259 

of those with whom it is associated and brought 
in contrast ! What sickness must infect the bo- 
som, what evil must smoulder in its blood, when 
the fortune of others, the praise of others, the en- 
joyment of others, wakens pain in its own fibres, 
and burns its sensibilities as though wrong had 
been wrought upon itself ; when sunshine that 
God pours upon another's way darkens its breast, 
and the bounties that drop into a neighbor's lap 
start a hideous and malignant hunger in its own 
soul! 

I have not time to dwell upon this sin in any 
detail. It besets civilized society and threatens 
Christian natures with its black poison. Strive 
with it if you are in peril from it ; for if you be- 
come subject to it, it will pollute the currents of 
your life. God created the world in unspeakable 
generosity, and you cannot be in harmony with 
his life if you have an envious heart. Nature will 
not be to you, society will not be to you, innocent 
pleasure will not be to you, what they might and 
would be if that bitter drop from hell was not 
hidden in the core of your spirit. You are not 
only exposed to God's direct judgments upon so 
hateful a sin, you are not only liable to the savage 
retributions which envy, by its own natural mis- 
eries, inflicts on the soul, but all your life gets des- 
ecrated by it, and is re-created as it flows through 
you with its stamp. 

Avarice offers an equally strong and repulsive 
illustration. If you are tempted morally by the 



260 The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 

love of money, and if through your weakness or 
negligence it becomes supreme in you, your 
whole life is tinged by the jaundice you have 
allowed to infect the heart. God's quality is in 
the world around you ; but your quality is diffused 
through all that you see and experience. Only 
the heart that is sympathetic and merciful, only 
the heart that holds money subordinate to gener- 
ous uses and service, can know what the gracious 
stars and the munificent sun and the liberal sea 
and the bounteous earth whisper to us from the 
spirit of God ; can know what is the glory of his- 
tory, what the worth of human nature, what " the 
unsearchable riches of Christ." The issues of 
life from your heart shrivel if you insist on turn- 
ing it into a money-till, and will not bring it into 
harmony with nature and the Gospel by keeping 
it a fountain of benefits and love. 

Remember that the innermost woe of self-indul- 
gence and intemperate pleasure is the vicious im- 
agination they create and the turbid heart they 
leave, which, like the troubled sea, casts up mire 
and dirt to pollute the transparent medium in 
which God invites us to dwell. When the vice of 
license becomes despotic in a soul, it soils all the 
purity of God's art and bounty. The world is 
clean and lovely as on the first day; but the im- 
pure soul has thickened the light, and virtually 
turned nature into a wide fen. 

Keep thy heart, my brother, with all diligence, 



The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 261 

for its state is of unspeakable moment with you. 
Life comes to all of us from the same Infinite 
source. Its treasury in nature and the Spirit is 
identical for the rich and the poor, the evil and 
the good. But its qualities, so different — we 
must search our natures for the cause of those. 
It is one element of water that is distilled by Prov- 
idence for the refreshment of man. Pure and 
tasteless, it is tempted by the sunshine out of the 
sea, and is wrung from cloudy sponges upon the 
hillsides, to be distributed under ground for the 
universal need. Yet how variously in taste and 
wholesomeness it bubbles finally for our using ! 
It gets the quality of the earth ; it is penetrated 
by the influence of the chalk layers, the beds of 
limestone, the clay deposits, the granite, the min- 
eral floors, the swampy regions through which it 
filters, and from which it issues into light. Ah ! 
and if a snake has his home at the spring where 
it bubbles for our drinking, of what consequence 
is it that it dropped at first cleaner than a seraph's 
tears upon a mountain peak, and has taken no 
stain on its passage, if poison drips from that 
creature to mix with all its pulses at last ? " Keep 
thy heart with all diligence " ; for, though all your 
life flows to you out of God, the venom may be 
secreted from the passions you nourish to taint 
all the stream. 

The moral evils we have been treating of, envy, 
avarice, selfishness, license, only vivify with various 



262 The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 



coloring the one fundamental evil, sin, — dis- 
tance from sympathy with God, alienation from 
the heavenly Father, indifference or disloyalty to 
his will and love. This is our central foe. This 
is what corrupts the issues of life. This is the 
serpent at the fountain. Back of all sins is sin. 
The one comprehensive purpose of life is to bring 
Infinite grace to bear on that, and drive it from 
the inmost artery of the soul. 

Consider, my brother, how this universe changes 
hue and expression before you, when once in a 
while the sense of God comes to you afresh, and 
for the moment thrills you through and through. 
You look up, perhaps, into the clear night, and 
you feel for a season that all those dots are worlds 
floating on the sea of his power, or, through their 
light, breaks full upon you the countenance of In- 
finite life and purity. You are under the spell of 
some religious eloquence, and you get a glimpse 
for an instant of the truth of Providence, — what 
it means that Infinite thought and care embosom 
and penetrate this whole creation. Your passions 
are still, your heart is in chord with holy truth, 
and for a moment the cloud of your ordinary 
scepticism breaks, and you see the blue heaven 
of life and love glowing over this world of death, 
and you know in that vision what it is to believe 
in immortality. Think, now, of a soul in which 
these passing moods, to which you have been 
lifted, are states, — that feels the life of God trem- 



The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 263 

bling over all the strings of nature ; that believes 
in Providence just as firmly as in human experi- 
ence, in perfect justice just as strongly as in par- 
tial wrong, in eternal life as constantly as in 
bodily death, in final order as fixedly as in con- 
fusion now. Is not the world re-born to such a 
soul ? Has it not found the blessed sorcery that 
exorcises from nature all that haunts the heart 
and darkens joy? Is not nature rebuilt for such 
a mind into an enduring home? 

It is Christian truths and qualities settled into 
inward states that do this, — the turning of a few 
sentences of the New Testament into the life- 
blood of the heart. And it is sin (not any partic- 
ular and namable sin, but sin in its essence, — 
selfishness, unconsecration, love of yourself more 
than truth and goodness, what the Church means 
by " depravity of the affections ") that keeps you 
from this state. This it is, more than blindness, 
lack of evidence, or incompetence of the mind to 
grapple with such problems. 

The first thing to do, in order that such life 
may issue from your heart, is to get your heart 
broken. Not because it is totally corrupt, but 
because it is not centrally dedicated, — because 
God is not invited and admitted to the inner 
shrine, to rule thence with his wisdom and purity, 
so that you shall consciously live for him. This 
world, with its hard conditions and mysteries, is 
built for an upper and nether millstone to grind 
pride out of human hearts, to crush their natural 



264 The Heart, and the Issues of Life. 

state, so that, in penitence and humility, God may 
come into the spirit, and the world seem remade 
because the soul is regenerate in consecration 
and the beginning of a filial life. When you 
throw sin from the centre of the heart to the 
outside, so that thenceforth, however you may sin, 
you have the principle of protest, sorrow, and re- 
newal in your soul, by the presence of the Holy 
Spirit there, — when you are thus dedicated as a 
temple to the Divine Love, the whole light of the 
world is religious; your joy is sweetened by piety, 
your adversities are illumined, your wrongs are 
tinged with the light of Christ's patience and for- 
giveness, and you see that the grave is only a 
step nearer to God. 

You are to keep your heart with ail diligence, 
by desiring and praying for this spirit of sympa- 
thy with God and allegiance to him. And you 
are also to "keep" it by living in fellowship with 
great truths and sentiments. If you have had 
any seasons or season when you have seen the 
value and blessedness of a religious conception 
of the universe and of religious principle, honor 
that; honor your soul's own witness to sacred 
realities, by trying to keep in the society of those 
noble truths and ideas. 

Some persons wonder why they do not see 
more of this sacred meaning, and feel more of 
this spiritual joy in life, than they do, if religious 
truth, if the Gospel of Jesus, is so certain a 
reality. " We have no hostility," they say, " that 



The Hearty and the Issues of Life. 265 

we are conscious of, to God and the sphere of 
spiritual verities. Why, then, does not life pre- 
sent such an aspect and such glory to us ? " It is 
simply because the luxury and cheer of religion 
are something to be lived up to and lived into. 
The perception that there is a God, that the Bible 
is probably true, that the spirit of Christ is higher 
than selfishness, is highest in history, may be 
gained, as a transient thing, by thought and by 
logic ; but you must take these truths into your 
sympathy, live their society so that the material- 
ism of habit will thin away, and the darkness of 
self and self-indulgence melt, before the charm 
they shed on the world will appear. And so, my 
friend, do not ask if you simply believe that God 
exists, but try to make him more familiar to your 
mind and heart, — try to feel him in your con- 
science, in your purest affections, pleading, in the 
appeals that breathe within you, for a devouter 
and more loyal life. These are the great truths 
of the world, and the all-important facts of your 
life, and by keeping the company of such high 
conceptions and moods, you are putting yourself 
in the line of their rewards and bliss. You are 
to grow into the joys of faith. That is the law. 
And how can you — how can you ? — sweeten life, 
if you do not and will not try to keep fellowship, 
though temptation and sloth and the flesh stand 
in the way, with the supreme realities of nature ? 

If, therefore, you wish to be serious with this 
subject that tries to be serious with you, ask your- 
12 



266 The Hearty a?td the Issues of Life. 

selves how much need you have to reconsider 
and rearrange the habits of your life, before you 
can keep your heart with all diligence, — what 
passions you should trample which you now cher- 
ish, and what zeal you require in searching for 
God in nature, in life, and the Bible, that you 
may find him, and so find rest. 

1857. 



XVII. 



SALT THAT HAS LOST ITS SAVOR; OR, RELIGION 
CORRUPTED. 

" Ye are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt have lost his 
savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? it is thenceforth good for 
nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of 
men." — Matthew v. 13. 

THIS passage refers primarily to the first dis- 
ciples of Jesus, and chiefly to the Apostles. 
How powerfully, with this interpretation, it re- 
veals the prophetic reach and clearness of the 
vision of the Saviour, and the force of imagination 
which condenses into one focus a vast amount of 
truth, and of truth which rays out in various direc- 
tions ! Jesus addressed these words to his dis- 
ciples, on the threshold of his ministry, in the 
Sermon on the Mount. The company was gath- 
ered in an obscure district of Galilee, and the 
Teacher said to his chosen disciples, " You are 
related to the welfare, not of this district simply, 
nor to this mountain-region of Palestine only, 
nor to Palestine itself as the limit of your influ- 
ence, but to the welfare of the world. You are 
the salt of the earth." 

Christ did not say that his truth was the salt of 



268 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 



the earth, but that those teachers were, — his 
truth embodied or rather ensouled in those men. 
" The Word was made flesh " in him ; and it was 
to be by the Word made flesh to some extent in 
those humble and unlettered persons that redeem- 
ing influence, preserving life, was to be diffused 
throughout the world. 

What could have seemed then more unlikely to 
be true than that broad, tremendous statement? 
What were they, those first believers in Galilee, 
husbandmen, fishermen, artisans, knowing, per- 
haps, scarcely a phrase of the languages of civili- 
zation and power, — what were they in relation to 
the thought, the culture, the power, the fashion, 
the opulence, the passions, the interests of that 
generation ? But Jesus said that, of all that 
proud and heaving life in whose expanse they 
seemed to be mere insects on an ocean, they 
were the preserving element, — not ephemera on 
the waves, but the salt of the deeps. And it 
became true. Think of our dependence on the 
disciples to whom the Sermon on the Mount was 
first preached ! If the Apostles had failed, the 
world would have failed. Christianity has been 
the world's life, and the diffusion of it was de- 
pendent on the loyalty and truthfulness of the 
Apostles. ■ If they had lost their savor, after 
Jesus had passed into heaven, wherewith should 
the world have been salted ? If Peter had been 
permanently a coward ; if all the twelve had been 
Judases, ratable on the world's price-current at 



or, Religion Corrupted. 269 



thirty pieces of silver each ; if John, who once 
wanted to call down fire from heaven on an inhos- 
pitable village, had never advanced beyond the 
desire of revenge ; if Thomas had always been a 
doubter ; if James had reached no higher ambition 
than to sit on Christ's right hand, a prominent 
office-holder in an earthly kingdom of Jesus, — if 
all the Apostles had fallen in the line of their 
weakness, and had failed to be channels of the 
truth and spirit of their Saviour, the world would 
have perished morally, there would have been no 
salt for a decaying civilization ; and on the nega- 
tive side the words of Jesus would have been 
proved true. How fortunate for us, what a call 
to devout gratitude from us, that those words, 
which must have seemed so extravagant and dis- 
proportionate at their first utterance in the seclu- 
sion of ignorant Galilee, have become true on the 
positive side, so that we are living in a civiliza- 
tion of which the first Apostles, taking their life 
from the Saviour, were the preserving salt! 

But the passage contains a truth of which the 
first application to the Apostles is only a small 
part. If they had failed to be true to their trusts 
and call, they would have been not simply un- 
faithful men, but impious and infamous men. 
The verdict against them in heaven would have 
been high treason. They would have been fit for 
nothing but " to be trodden under foot of men." 
This was so in the case of Judas. He fell from 
an immense height; he was chosen to be salt, 



270 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 

and he chose to be taint; he not only failed 
to fulfil his duty, but he turned his sovereign 
opportunity and highest trust into the means of 
wickedness ; he converted salt into poison, and 
he has given his name to the highest class of 
crimes. Consummate traitors are branded with 
it as their severest historical punishment. He has 
been accounted good for nothing — poor short- 
sighted man, who might have sat on one of the 
twelve thrones of the whole moral world ! — but 
to be stamped under the feet of the human race. 
So valid, brethren, are the words of Jesus Christ. 

Peter came near to fulfilling them. He denied 
his Master ; he made oath with curses, too, that 
he knew him not. He fell ; but he rose quickly, 
and renewed the salt of his character by the tears 
of his repentance, to become a principle of life to 
tens of thousands of souls. 

Where a man is so connected with others that 
his virtue must be a public blessing, and his vice 
or unfaithfulness a public and far-spreading dis- 
aster, he must be very careful of his loyalty, for 
he is exposed to the sweep of this principle ut- 
tered first to the Apostles by Him who " spake 
as never man spake." There is no person who 
receives more abundant and demonstrative honor 
than the soldier who is a consecrated patriot, and 
who is successful in rescuing his country from 
peril. And the fall of a soldier morally from a 
position of high trust is one of the most awful 
instances of sin. No one thinks of peering 



or, Religion Corrupted. 



2JI 



closely into the private character of the Duke of 
Wellington. Few think of trying to make a nice 
estimate of the private and public worth of Lord 
Nelson. The private or personal sins or failings 
of such men are accounted of far less import 
than with most of us ; and not because military 
and naval glory confounds our perception or se- 
duces our judgment, but because their public 
service, by their thorough fidelity to their supreme 
duty, was an immense force of good to millions in 
their land. In large relations they were the salt 
of the nation, and they did not suffer it to lose its 
savor. Whatever private vices they had cast a 
shadow but a little way; if they had carried a 
vice in their passions that were related to public 
life, it would have cast a long, wide, terrible 
shadow, and none the less although they might 
have been free from some personal failings that 
may be detected in them now. 

Nobody thinks of asking now about the private 
or domestic character of Arnold. He may have 
been benevolent, a kind and tender husband, a 
friend ready to attest private friendship by sacri- 
fices. Suppose that all this should be proved 
in his behalf. The qualities, to be sure, would be 
good ; we could not call them anything less or 
else than good. God would regard them as good, 
and reward them as such, no doubt. But he was 
not sent to West Point to be kind to his wife, 
tender to his children, faithful to one or two per- 
sonal friends. He was not chosen for that post 



272 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 

by the recommendation of such graces of charac- 
ter. He was sent to be true to a nation, and 
with the expectation that he would dedicate brain 
and sword, watchfulness and valor, will and con- 
stancy, to an abused and suffering people in the 
crisis of its fate. He was lifted up to a post 
where light from him or shadow from him must 
sweep, not over one home or a restricted circle, 
but over thousands of square miles, millions of 
human beings, generations of his countrymen. 
He chose that it should be gloom. And if he 
should be proved ten times as attractive a man 
in the virtues that show themselves on a smaller 
scale as he can ever be rated, the nation he was 
willing to betray would not hesitate to stamp 
him still beneath its feet, as the only fit judgment 
upon his public crime. 

No doubt many of the leaders of the present re- 
bellion are men who are estimable in private re- 
lations. They would not repudiate a debt. They 
would not break an oath. They would not creep 
into chambers, and, with dark lantern in one hand 
and dagger in the other, strike into the heart of 
a sleeping victim before he could wake under the 
fiendish ray. Alas! how much better for most 
of them if they had only such guilt to answer for 
in history and before God ! It was obligations 
by scores of millions that they tore up. It is 
pledges of honor involving the interests of a con- 
tinent which they breathed away in perjury. It 
is a nation's heart they felt for with light and cun- 



or, Religion Corrupted. 273 



ning fingers, that they might strike into its tre- 
mendous pulse and enjoy the sight of the spouting 
torrent of life. Let us not try to picture it. Turn 
away from their work to pray that it may not be 
completed according to the awful scheme of 
assassination ; to pray that the land may be saved, 
that their children may enjoy the fruits of the 
patriotic service which strives to prevent the con- 
summation of the guilt, and that they may be for- 
given of heaven through ample penitence. But 
let the projected spectacle and the thought of its 
intended horrors impress us with the importance, 
in God's sight, of positions where character acts 
upon a wide moral area, and shapes or mars the 
happiness and prosperity of millions to come. 

Legislators ought to think of this principle 
thus. If they put their vices into laws they dam- 
age a state. A private falsehood, a trick in busi- 
ness, a fraud in a transaction with one person, is 
a black sin. What is it to corrupt the sources 
of justice, to put false weights into scales that 
stretch from Colorado to Syskiyou, to tamper 
with the rights and prosperity of hundreds of 
settlements which men hold in trust ? Yet I pre- 
sume that sometimes the very magnitude of the 
interasts involved blinds a man to the sin of un- 
faithfulness to them. He does not see that it is 
proportionally immense. Sometimes a man will 
endanger the rights of ten thousand people, or 
fail to enlarge the prosperity of a hundred thou- 
sand for whom he is trustee, who could not be 
12* R 



274 vSVz// that has lost its Savor; 

tempted to cheat one man in the same town with 
himself, or be false to the claims of one client or 
one ward. No person has the right to a seat in 
any legislative assembly who is so loosely made 
in the spirit that he can imagine principles to be 
less sacred when they reach communities than 
when they reach persons, and who does not feel the 
privilege and honor and responsibility of strength- 
ening instead of weakening justice and truth in 
the statutes and customs of a state. The privi- 
lege is vast. It is kindred with the privilege of 
the first disciples and Apostles. As private Gali- 
leans they were endowed with the simple oppor- 
tunities of fishermen, tax-gatherers, and mechanics. 
Called out by Christ to represent his truth, they 
were the salt of the earth, and their fidelity was to 
be part of the strength and soundness of future 
centuries. A thoughtful and honest legislator will 
feel grateful for the privilege of a post where his 
private conscience may help the enactment of 
justice and the diffusion of beneficence and the 
defeat of wrong and the uplifting of light for the 
benefit of thousands whom personally he can never 
know. And every hall of legislation is under the 
blaze and sweep, positively and negatively, of the 
passage, " If the salt have lost his savor, where- 
with shall it be salted ? it is thenceforth good for 
nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden 
under foot of men." 

I beg you to see the same law of trust in rela- 
tion to your homes. There are forces for good in 



or, Religion Corrupted. 275 



modern Christendom outside of the household. 
There is the daily school, there is the Sunday 
school, there is the influence of the Church, there 
are good books. But the home is the enclosure 
where the principles are most likely to be formed 
and the instincts to be pointed towards truth and 
good. And if that influence is indifferent or 
wrong, in thousands of cases the season of oppor- 
tunity is lost. As to the characters of children 
parents are appointed to be the salt of the earth. 
And scepticism there, levity there in the home, 
the unchecked play of passions there in open 
despite of God's law, the plain and daily enthrone- 
ment of worldly aims there as though nothing 
else is substantial, are not only personal sins in a 
father or mother, but a betrayal of trust, the 
conversion of a sacred energy into a polluting 
force. " If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall 
it be salted ? " That is the moan over ten thou- 
sand desecrated homes. Wherewith shall char- 
acter be seasoned ? The domestic influence is 
against the budding soul. Blight is in the dew, 
bane is in the air, virus is in the sunshine, pesti- 
lence is in the soil. How shall the plant grow 
healthily ? Now and then a breeze that is pure, 
a stream of wholesome light, visits it ; but the 
permanent forces are against it, the forces that 
should nurture it morally only dwarf or wound. 
Are you willing that your homes shall come, or 
be in danger of coming, under this description ? 
One of two kinds your homes must be, — helpful 



2j6 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 



or hurtful to the rising life in them. If hurtful, 
no other influence will be so hostile ; if you make 
them winningly helpful, your houses are sacred, — 
they are churches, — however obscure they be by 
social tests here, they are part of the landscape 
of the kingdom of heaven. 

But there is another significance in the words 
of Jesus more general than any we have drawn 
from the passage, and not less impressive in its 
instruction and warning. It not only teaches us 
that great trusts betrayed are the deadliest sins, 
but it intimates or implies that there is nothing 
worse than corrupted religion. What a man hon- 
estly accepts as a religious obligation or impulse 
may be so far from religious that it deserves to be 
trampled under foot. 

Some commentators tell us that Jesus made a 
specific allusion in this passage to a substance 
which was well known to all who had seen the 
temple sacrifices in Jerusalem. They say that a 
kind of bitumen from the Dead Sea was used to 
sprinkle the meats offered on the altars, called the 
" Sodom salt," and that when it lost its virtue it 
was strewn on the temple pavement to prevent the 
priests from slipping. However this may be, the 
principle is true that what a man supposes to be 
religious may, although connected in his thought 
with services and sanctions of religion, be not 
only destitute of religious value, but so hostile to 
the pure religious spirit that it is horrible, fit only 
to be trodden under foot, — salt of Sodom. 



or, Religion Corrupted. 



277 



You all know how, on a large scale, in history, 
perverted religion has been one of the chief 
curses of mankind. What hatreds have been so 
intense as those which rival theologies have in- 
flamed ? What wars have been so infuriate as 
those whose banners, on both sides, have borne 
the same figure of Christ, but set in different 
lights? What courts have been so thirsty for 
blood as those sustained by priests for the testing 
of heresy ? " Perverted religion," do we call this ? 
No, brethren. Inverted religion it is. Sin, crime 
against God and the New Testament, high trea- 
son in the spiritual kingdom, is it. Religion has 
nothing to do with it, but to throw it into shadow, 
and make it the more heinous. It claims to be 
part of the altar-service of the human race, but it 
is the worst infamy. It is a power from the eter- 
nal world, but it is from the kingdom of evil, a 
flame from hell. Whatever tends to it, whatever 
is in harmony with it, whatever seems to be in 
kindred with it, in your own heart, quench it, tear 
it out, trample it down. It is Satanic. Men 
have said that devotion to the truth of God has 
led them to such methods of extirpating error, 
and of keeping the Church or a nation pure. 
But the deepest truth of the Church is good-will, 
charity. And a man draws the sword, or un- 
sheathes his bitterest passions, to impose his 
creed on others, only after he has changed the 
sovereign " truth of God into a lie." 

Such manifestations of malignant passion in 



278 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 



the supposed service of pure Christianity are 
rarer to-day than they have been. But eager zeal 
for the offensive prominence of a particular the- 
ology or form of worship, with sweeping sneers at 
other forms of truth and homage, or sweeping 
condemnation of all other types of belief, is un- 
fortunately not infrequent now. You sometimes 
meet with Catholics who never raise the question 
that there can be any saving power or faith out- 
side the reach of their miraculous sacraments. 
You sometimes meet with High-Church Epis- 
copalians who cannot imagine that the angels or 
the Infinite One willingly listen to any prayers 
that have not the rhythm of the English Church 
service. They seem to imagine that Christ came 
to supply the materials for a liturgy ; they tell you 
that not for the world would they go into a build- 
ing where heretic services are held ; and it is 
only with a cough or a stammer that they can 
apply the word " church " to any organization of 
believers beyond their own communion. So you 
meet now and then with Trinitarian Christians, of 
other sects, who speak with the same scorn of a 
possible title in Unitarians to the Christian name. 
And I have had the misfortune of knowing not a 
very few Unitarians, who think themselves rep- 
resentatives of the body and devoted to its inter- 
ests, that draw their chief delight, one would think, 
from exposing absurdities in Trinitarian creeds, 
and questioning the sincerity of any Trinitarian 
piety. 

All this is equally distant from the religious 



or, Religion Corrupted. 279 



spirit. This is pride of opinion, passion for a 
party, sectarianism, bigotry, imagining itself the 
sacred force and bond of society. A man is not 
called on to separate himself from one denomi- 
nation, and to try to attach himself to all denomi- 
nations, — flitting everywhere and alighting no- 
where, — in order to show his freedom from 
prejudice and largeness of heart. But he must 
learn that Church order is not religion, sacraments 
are not religion, conclusions about the Trinity are 
not religion, criticisms of the Trinity and defences 
of the Divine Unity are not religion. These are 
bark and roots and fibre and twigs. Religion is 
fruit. Peaches cannot grow except on a peach 
branch and from the juices of that wood. But 
pears do not require such a stock. And what if 
God is raising, not peaches only, but plums and 
grapes and pears also, in the vineyard of the 
Spirit, and ordains that there shall be different 
kinds of wood — varying theologies and church- 
cultures — in order that there may be various 
kinds of products in the realm of grace ? If you 
belong to the apple-department of the orchard, 
keep there and try to be as sound and savory as 
possible. But if you make it your business to 
vilify the other trees, and to prove that the peaches 
are heretic and hateful in the sight of God, you 
prove yourself a worm-eaten apple, a crab-apple ; 
your own juices have lost their savor; what you 
call your religion is only a sign of your worthless- 
ness, and it is fit only to be trodden under foot 
of men. 



280 Salt that has lost its Savor; 

One cannot read the biographies and diaries of 
consecrated men without seeing — often with ter- 
ror, too — how full the higher ranges of Christian 
ambition are of peril to the simplicity of the heart's 
feeling and trust. I was reading, a few days ago, a 
statement in a biography of the celebrated Pascal, 
one of the lights of French literature, one of the 
clearest thinkers and sincerest devotees the Church 
of Christ has produced. He was a Catholic and 
belonged to the order of the Jansenists, and flour- 
ished in the middle of the seventeenth century. 
His whole time was devoted to religious inquiries 
and meditations, and in order to mortify the flesh, 
he wore a girdle armed with iron spikes under his 
robe, which he drove in upon his ribs as often as 
he thought himself in need of sharp practical ad- 
monitions. In his infirmities he was attended by 
his sister, who was tenderly and proudly devoted 
to him. But he assumed harshness of manners 
towards her, to repel her, if possible, from love of 
him, and argued calmly With her — this profound 
and noble thinker in other respects — that God 
has the claim to the whole of human love, and 
that to set apart any of it for objects that must 
change and die is folly and a sin ! Thus may 
religious love be corrupted, till it must be called 
an infection, not a grace ; a dreadful disease, 
not the bounding of health through the soul. 
The passions of Pascal were not malignant ; if 
they had been, he would have turned by his mis- 
take of logic into a systematic and remorseless 



or, Religion Corrupted. 2S1 

persecutor. But his mistake cramped, if it did 
not curdle, his heart ; and he believed himself 
under the dominion of the most exalted principle 
when he was harboring a parody on Christian 
love, torturing a spirit that had a right to his sym- 
pathy and affection, and upholding a sentiment 
as divine which was fit, not for the dignified an- 
swer of logic, but only to be trodden under foot of 
men. 

So sometimes you see persons in whom religion 
is the stimulant of self-righteousness. Instead of 
humbling themselves before God, they count them- 
selves distinguished before God by their offices 
and offerings of outward piety. They build up a 
factitious set of duties and services, which have 
no relation to the substantial work of life and the 
natural display of character, and they seem to be- 
lieve themselves worthy in the Infinite sight for 
their punctilious discharge of them. I do not 
like to treat this class of spirits at much length, 
for I do not like to be critical or to indulge in 
terms of satire. But the danger in this direction 
is attested by the frequency and the unsparing 
force of the denunciation of it in the four Gos- 
pels. Self-righteousness, pride, — not masked as 
religion, but the pride of deformed religion, dis- 
tance from simplicity and natural tenderness of 
soul, — is the chief evil in the instruction of Jesus. 
The sins to which the Church is exposed are more 
terribly condemned by the Saviour than the sins 
to which the world is exposed • not because he 
had a word of toleration for the last, but that he 



282 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 

saw how the first may be more deadly within and 
more destructive without. 

Even prayer, Jesus teaches us, may be an of- 
fence, when it is not a mockery, when it is sincere. 
Read the sketch of the Pharisee and Publican to 
learn how, when prayer is the natural prostration 
of humility, or trust, or filial confidence, the con- 
fession of a sense of God's nearness, the offering 
of a sacrifice in submission, or penitence, or de- 
vout joy, the asking of good to others, the longing 
for the widening of good-will and the spirit of 
Christ over the world, — what more gracious, what 
more sweet, what more precious as an expression 
of the soul, as an experience under the Infinite 
gaze! But when it is the Pharisee's prayer, — " I 
thank thee that I am not as other men, I fast 
twice in the week, I pay tithes of all I possess ; I 
am not a half-outcast like this Publican," — how- 
ever it be veiled or varied in modern expression, 
whoever offers it or cherishes it, though it conceal 
itself from the forms of address to God and show 
itself only in Church pride, estimates of theology, 
Church annals and traditions, particular Church 
sacraments and worship, it is from beneath, and 
it goes downward in the universe, not upward. It 
is worldliness dressed as piety, exclusiveness aping 
love, salt that has lost its cleansing virtue and is 
only bitter, — not of the ocean quality, but Dead- 
Sea salt, the salt of Sodom. 

Do you ask what test you can have to prove 
the health of your religious spirit, and to show 
whether or not the heart is under its control ? 



or, Religion Corrupted. 283 



Perhaps the figure which the Saviour used will 
help us. Salt, when pure, is good in relation to 
something else. We do not eat it immediately. 
We use it to prepare and preserve other articles. 
Without it the world would die ; but nobody 
spreads a table with it and invites his friends to a 
feast of it, or makes a private meal of it. Its of- 
fice is to penetrate and flavor and save the nat- 
ural products of the world. 

Your religion, brethren, is not a distinct ser- 
vice, the subscription of a creed, the learning of 
a catechism, the payment of a church-tax, the de- 
votion to a party or ecclesiastical order, the pas- 
sion for a hierarchy or liturgy or theology • no, 
nor distinct spiritual exercises chiefly, for the sake 
of honoring or propitiating God. Your religion 
is a permeating element in the natural order and 
affections and duties of life. It must hide in the 
spirit as salt in the bread, and show itself in the 
whole outline and effluence of the nature. It is 
to make your truthfulness more secure and in- 
stinctive, your integrity more firm, your thoughts 
more pure, your desires more chaste, your friend- 
ship more delicate ; your will more loyal to God 
in the shock and surprises of temptation ; your 
use of money more charitable and less selfish or 
careless ; your home more sweet and cheerful ; 
your care of your children more wise and tender ; 
your estimate of life as a scene of discipline more 
and more thoughtful, yet not oppressive and 
gloomy ; your reverence of God spontaneous, as 
the power that upholds the universe ; your love 



284 Salt that has lost its Savor ; 



of God an inward brooding emotion, as the Spirit 
that made you and is ready to fill your heart with 
grace and peace. 

Religion adds nothing, Christianity adds noth- 
ing, to the natural duties of the soul and the will. 
It interprets them, and offers aid to fulfil them 
under its interpretation. The Church is not for 
itself, but to help you make life thus sound and 
sweet. Prayer, written or extempore, vocal or 
secret, is to assist you thus in life. Theologies, 
bishops, ministers, biographies, sects, commenta- 
ries, cathedrals, Church festivals and fasts, every- 
thing that belongs to the outward order of the 
Church and its history, is to help you for this work 
and attainment. And whatever cramps your char- 
ity, and makes God seem partial, and narrows 
your fellowship, and arouses passion and bitter- 
ness in the name of religion, is fit only to be trod- 
den under foot. The study of the New Testa- 
ment, of the life and spirit of your Lord, is thus 
to set you fairly before the work of life, animate 
you for it, support you in it, and prepare you for 
wider and deeper life when the veil lifts. 

Keep your religion pure. Do not confound it 
with your theology or with any Church pretension 
or with pride or dogmatism. Do not degrade it to 
the level of your passions, and so corrupt life at the 
springs ; but remember this is the test which dis- 
tinguishes the true salt from that which has lost 
its savor : " God is love, and he that dwelleth in 
love dwelleth in God and God in him." 

1862. 



XVIII. 



LESSONS FROM THE SIERRA NEVADA. 

" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh 
my help." — Psalm cxxi. i. 

IN the Atlantic Monthly for June our great 
naturalist, Mr. Agassiz, reports an anecdote 
of the eminent German geologist, Von Buch, one 
of the founders of that recent and majestic sci- 
ence. Mr. Agassiz, when a young man, was 
acquainted with him, and knew, by personal inter- 
course, that the explorer into the mysteries of the 
earth's formation had the poet's feeling and the 
worshipper's heart. All great natural phenomena 
impressed him deeply. " On one occasion/' says 
Mr. Agassiz, " it was my good fortune to make 
one of a party from the ' Helvetic Association for 
the Advancement of Science ' on an excursion to 
the eastern extremity of the Lake of Geneva. I 
well remember the expressive gesture of Von 
Buch as he faced the deep gorge through which 
the Rhone issues from the interior of the Alps. 
While others were chatting and laughing about 
him, he stood for a moment absorbed in silent 
contemplation of the grandeur of the scene, then 



286 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

lifted his hat and bowed reverently before the 
mountains." 

This, brethren, is the spirit out of which the 
most efficient knowledge grows, this is the spirit 
which acquaintance with the works of God should 
ever deepen and feed. I meet you to-night 
that we may together bow reverently before the 
mountains that guard the eastern frontier of 
our State, with whose majesty I have been per- 
mitted, of late, to form an intimate acquaintance. 
Love of nature has its root in wonder and venera- 
tion, and it issues in many forms of practical 
good. There can be no abounding and ardent 
patriotism where sacred attachment to the scenery 
of our civil home is wanting ; and there can be 
no abiding and inspiring religious joy in the heart 
that recognizes no presence and touch of God in 
the permanent surroundings of our earthly abode. 

The great bane of modern life is materialism, — 
the divorce of spirit from power, order, bounty, 
and beauty in our thought of the world. We 
look upon nature as a machine, a play of forces 
that run of necessity and of course. We do not 
bow before it with wonder and awe as the mani- 
festation of a present all-animating will and art. 
Whatever leads us to such feelings towards the 
universe puts us on the road to Christian faith, 
helps character, and lifts the plane of the privi- 
lege of life. I believe that if, on every Sunday 
morning before going to church, we could be 
lifted to a mountain-peak and see a horizon line 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 287 

of six hundred miles enfolding the copious splen- 
dor of the light on such a varied expanse ; or if 
we could look upon a square mile of flowers 
representing all the species with which the Crea- 
tive Spirit embroiders a zone ; or if we could be 
made to realize the distance of the earth from the 
sun, the light of which travels every morning twelve 
millions of miles a minute to feed and bless us, 
and which the force of gravitation pervades with- 
out intermission to hold our globe calmly in its 
orbit and on its poise ; if we could fairly perceive, 
through our outward senses, one or two features 
of the constant order and glory of nature, our 
materialistic dulness would be broken, surprise 
and joy would be awakened, we should feel that 
we live amid the play of Infinite thought \ and 
the devout spirit would be stimulated so potently 
that our hearts would naturally mount in praise 
and prayer. 

I cannot but feel that it is a religious privilege 
to ride, in the long hours of a summer's day, from 
the vast plain in which they subside, up the slopes 
to the crest of a mighty mountain-wall. Our 
thoughts are soon led to the tremendous forces 
that sleep around us. Over the rolling outworks 
we pass till, shut in by the bubbles of the plain, 
we approach the long firm buttresses and com- 
mence to conquer their acclivities. The path 
winds with the tortuous banks of canons, and 
twists to overcome steep cliffs, and we look off 
upon the sharp slopes or precipitous sides of the 



288 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

opposite heights. Now and then the awful gutter 
of a land-slide opens its gray desolation, and the 
immense boulders that once ground their way in 
thunder through the night storm, with a momen- 
tum that makes human artillery seem petty, He 
half crushed below, amid the ravage of their 
wrath. Soon we see a clean-washed cliff that 
calmly tells us what the anatomy of the globe is 
thousands of feet below the plains. Higher up a 
spire breaks through tilted strata, to give us a 
more intense conception of the energy, ages ago, 
of the central fire. 

A visitor to the mountains toils up the grade 
which skill has smoothed slowly against the con- 
stant pull of gravitation. It is a great achieve- 
ment if, with noble horses, he can mount eight 
miles an hour towards the pass, so persistent 
and despotic is the force that holds the globe 
compact ; and the mountains are trophies of 
triumph over that force. They sprang to their 
height under the whip of the internal flame, and 
there they maintain themselves in spite of the 
protest of the force that seeks to pull them down. 
They are not dead mounds of matter. They are 
nervous tide-lines of tremendous power. The 
crests of the Alps, the cones of the Cordilleras, 
the awful wedges and splinters of the sovereign 
Himalaya, are the cold stiff spray of a power that 
burst from the planet's breast and still hides there. 
The perpetual cold tells of heat. The seeming 
granite permanence is the confession of passion 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 289 

and unrest. The incalculable weight of the hills 
is the sign of a fury before which all weight is a 
toy. Amid such powers we are living. Over 
such deeps of mysterious wrath our order is built, 
our life is shaped ; and all this force is in the 
hand of God. His will is the fountain of it, his 
thought is the guide of it. What are we before 
one mountain and its subterranean fire? And 
yet what is the bulk and weight of the mountain 
to the mass of the globe ? And the globe is 
calm. It moves even, patient, peaceful in its 
furious sweep through immensity. And sun and 
planets, all suns and all worlds, all their weight 
and fires and speed, are upheld by his spirit, are 
moved and guided and curbed by the invisible 
potency of his sovereign will. Truly does the 
Psalm say : " Thou dost set fast the mountains by 
thy strength ; being girded with power." Truly 
did the prophet say : He " hath measured the 
waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out 
heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust 
of the earth in a measure, and weighed the moun- 
tains in scales, and the hills in a balance * . . . . 
behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little 
thing." The mountains are measures by which 
we may begin to form conceptions of Omnipo- 
tence. They lead us up from matter to mind. 
They teach faith in invisible force. The words 
of the Hebrew hymn are still true at the base of 
the Sierra, as at the base of Lebanon : " I will 
lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence com- 
12 s 



290 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

eth my help. My help cometh from the Lord 3 
who made heaven and earth." 

But it is not the power of the Infinite alone 
that is suggested as we ride up a great mountain 
slope : his goodness, his bounty, is equally mani- 
fest to the open eye. It is very important in our 
religious education or awakening to obtain and 
keep healthy and substantial convictions of the 
love of the Almighty, so that that word shall not 
represent a puny and pietistic sentiment alone. 
Whatever enlarges our conception of the opulence 
of nature, and makes us connect its affluence with 
the Creative Spirit, increases the possible force 
upon our hearts of the central doctrine of Chris- 
tianity, — the love of God. 

Mounting from the plains to the heights, we 
cannot help noticing the variety in the produc- 
tiveness of nature. Each quality of soil has its 
peculiar element of nutrition, and supports pecul- 
iar products. Each change of average tempera- 
ture, though slight, is marked by new kinds of 
flowers and shrubbery. Every gradation, every 
cranny and chink, is veined, often is bursting, with 
life or bloom. We go up from the gray hot 
sweeps or billows of the plain into coolness, into 
green, into a magnificent forest of fir, into a glori- 
ous belt of the sugar pine, lovelier than the cedars 
of Lebanon, into the regions of pure water and cold 
foamy cascades, that sometimes show a stream 
of winding whiteness for half a mile on a desolate 
cliff, and lastly into the healthful, blazing charity 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 291 

of the eternal snow ! What is the fit condensa- 
tion into speech of all this good but the language 
of the Psalm : " Thou openest thine hand and 
satisfiest the desire of every living thing ? " Na- 
ture produces nothing. God is the sole Creator. 
The variety of the productiveness of a mountain 
slope is a slight measure of his copious bounty. 
Not a sparrow falls to the ground, not a grass- 
blade grows, without your Father. Follow up 
the slopes of a mountain like Cbimborazo, in 
Equador, or Illimani, in Bolivia, and it is as if 
God opened his hand under your eye to reveal 
the breadth of his bounty. Its base is washed by 
a tropic sea ; its crest pierces the clean cold azure 
with arctic snow. And between is almost every 
type of the floral beauty and the vegetable riches 
of the climates of the earth ! This is the exhi- 
bition in one picture of the munificence of the 
Creator. All this is for man, for his education, 
for his delight, for his food, for his equipment, for 
his coronation, through the comprehension and 
the right use of it all, with glory and honor. 
And then remember that this exhibition is but of 
one mountain on this little earth. Think of the 
immense expanse and varieties of worlds that 
spot the night-fields with climates and scenery 
and conditions of life so different from ours, and 
try to imagine then what is the range of the crea- 
tiveness of God. 

Ah, brethren, while there is a mountain in the 
land that is clothed with green and embroidered 



292 Lessoiis from the Sierra Nevada. 

with flowers, say not that the love of God is a 
rustic sentiment which cannot be reached by 
the calm and healthy understanding. The over- 
whelming revelations of it are the difficulty. 
" Ask now the beasts, and they shall instruct 
thee ; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell 
thee ; or speak to the earth, and it shall teach 
thee, and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto 
thee." It is when we attempt to bound or de- 
fine the love of God that our difficulty begins. 
" Such knowledge is too wonderful for me 5 it is 
high, I cannot attain unto it." 

And at a little distance all this grandeur, all 
this power, all this fertility, are transfigured into 
pure beauty. There is no color on the globe 
comparable with that which robes a mountain at 
a sufficient distance, however rugged and deso- 
late the near aspect may be. One of the most 
accurate artistic students of nature that has ever 
lived, Mr. Ruskin, tells us that one cannot know 
what tenderness of color is, who has not seen the 
rose and purple hues of a great mountain twenty 
miles away. Mr. Emerson, in an exquisite pas- 
sage of poetry, has expressed and adorned the 
same fact thus : — 

" A score of airy miles will smooth 
Rough Monadnock to a gem." 

Move off to a distance of threescore airy 
miles, when the atmosphere is favorable, and 
what glorious beauty will the line of the Sierra 
wear ! I have seen the vast bulwark thus from 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 293 

the bank of the Sacramento in the spring, and 
once from the summit of Diablo, when they 
seemed, though on the earth, not of it. All their 
rocks, their gorges, their precipices, their streams, 
their desolate patches which the earth-avalanches 
had torn, their cliffs, their forests, their nooks and 
dells, their tortuous roads, all their bulk and sav- 
ageness reduced to smooth splendor of color ! 
First, a purple bar of foothills just beyond the 
dim edge of the immense prairie • then a middle 
slope of vague and tender green ; and then, 
crowning all, the golden snow (gold at that dis- 
tance) in an unceasing stretch of two hundred 
miles! What a vision through the clear air, 
when we sweep thus the complete physiognomy 
of their summits, — here a symmetrical peak, 
there a long ridge sawed into sharp spikes of 
creamy whiteness, and soon a huge climbing 
mound of brilliance, showing where the Carson 
turnpike leads the adventurers after silver, that 
cannot be polished or frosted to such beauty as 
sheathes its own tremendous dome ! 

Next to the Himalaya, in Hindostan, that ridge 
bears the most noble name of all the mountain- 
chains on the globe, — " Sierra Nevada." And 
when we see it sixty miles off, under clouds that 
mimic its pinnacles and swells, it shows like a 
vision from another world, like the street and 
wall of the New Jerusalem. Only the colors are 
in reverse order, as befits the reflection of heav- 
enly glory in an earthly medium. First comes 



294 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

the amethyst, midway the beryl, and on the 
heights, not at the base, the pure gold, as it were 
transparent glass. 

And all this splendor is part of the bounty and 
love of God. What a small part indeed of the 
glory of this one mountain-range we see at the 
most propitious point of our neighborhood ! The 
Sierra runs along the whole eastern line of our 
State, nay, it stretches southward through all 
Mexico and Central America; it is part of the 
Andes that wall the western coast of the Southern 
Continent; it ends in the cliffs of Cape Horn, 
washed by the fury of the cold Antarctic waves ; 
its line is closed on the north in the spires of 
rock and ice that spring near Behring's Straits- 
All the way along, from Polar Seas through the 
Equator to Polar Seas again, it wears such beauty, 
seen from distant points. The glory of morning, 
the richer glory of evening, breaks and dies upon 
it in hues which no artist can ever counterfeit, on 
every cloudless day. Is not part of the object of 
this opulence to lead those who see or contemplate 
it to bow before the riches of God's art and good- 
ness ? What if the earth had been sombre in its 
drapery ? What if the eclipse had been our com- 
mon tone of light? Ah, brethren, let us recog- 
nize the Father's goodness in the cheer and joy 
of the natural beauty, and let us think of the 
nearer presence of our Maker with solemn delight. 
He asks us to think of him, not as robed in thun- 
der and awe, but as hidden in light and glory. It 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 295 



is only now and then that a mountain is wrapped 
like Sinai. Their drapery is splendor, not gloom. 

" Since o'er thy footstool here below 

Such radiant gems are thrown, 
O, what magnificence must glow, 

Great God, about thy throne ! 
So brilliant here these drops of light, 

There the full ocean rolls — how bright ! " 

We often speak of a mountain-wall. The 
ancient founders of cities built walls to protect 
them against foes. The Chinese attempted thus 
to barricade their kingdom against aggression 
and intercourse. Riding up slowly the slopes of 
Sierra, one feels the grandeur of the tremendous 
barrier that has been upheaved along the western 
edge of a continent. The range, of which it is 
part, stretches almost unbroken from Cape Horn 
to the North Russian territory, nearly nine thou- 
sand miles. For some hundreds of miles it runs 
along the borders of our State, and for hundreds 
more through American soil in Oregon and Wash- 
ington. 

And yet the deeper and more inspiring thought 
that visits us as we rise and gradually conquer its 
" aerial shelves," is that it is not a barrier, in spite 
of its crags of thirteen thousand feet, and its 
passes of upreared granite a mile and a half from 
the level of the sea. There are passages over 
and through its tremendous ruggedness. 

" The mighty pyramids of stone, 

That, wedge-like, cleave the desert airs, 
When nearer seen and better known, 
Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 



296 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 



" The distant mountains, that uprear 
Their solid bastions to the skies, 
Are crossed by pathways, that appear 
As we to higher levels rise." 

It has been said, as part of the philosophy of 
history, that " mountains interposed make enemies 
of nations, that had else, like kindred drops, been 
mingled into one." In our country it is not so. 
Where the great barriers are upheaved there is 
really no wall. The Virginia beyond the moun- 
tains is one with the life and spirit of the nation. 
The Alleghanies of Tennessee support a loyal 
sentiment on both their slopes, and they carry the 
inspiration of that sentiment through their cool 
air to Northern Georgia and Alabama. The 
Rocky Mountains do not lie in the pathway of a 
loyal national passion, and the Sierras prove no 
wall against it. Over every mountain-chain, from 
Aroostook, in Maine, to the heights that divide our 
bay from the Pacific, one sentiment sweeps con- 
tinuous, one devotion, one hope, one speech, one 
prayer. There is no chain of hills or river-bank, 
or any other natural line or limit, to bound the 
district of the rebellion, and suggest the propriety 
of a new nationality, while it offers itself as the 
bulwark of it. All that might have seemed nat- 
urally perilous to the immensity of our republic 
has been easily conquered. Stages cross the 
Sierra, and wind up and over the lower slopes of 
Pike's Peak, and traverse the region between the 
sources of the Columbia and the Missouri. It is a 
line of sentiment only, cutting the tracks of rivers, 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 297 

that has threatened the nation, and that we must 
conquer by colonization. Nothing that God has 
made interrupts our unity. And when the spirit 
that has subdued the mountains, and hewn passes 
of easy grade out of their heights for American 
energy to move through, the spirit of free and 
honorable toil, the spirit that honors God in hon- 
oring man, — when this spirit goes down into the 
tropic lowlands of the nation, and applies its vigor 
to them, and recasts the tone of society around 
them, the nation will again be one ; the hills and 
the central valley stream will be in harmony, and 
the one flag of the republic will be supported on 
every height and every delta, by a common feel- 
ing, faith, and aim. By the war and its tendency 
to extirpate slavery, God is cutting for us this path 
through the frowning moral barrier that was up- 
heaved by Satan to rupture our social geography 
and our peace. 

But let us turn now to some of the moral les- 
sons which reflection upon heights opens to us. 

The mass of the mountains, according to geol- 
ogists, is very slight compared with the extent 
of the plain surfaces of the globe. If the Pyr- 
enees were levelled and spread out upon France, 
the effect would be to make the general level of 
the country but a rod or two higher; and the 
whole matter of the Alps shovelled over Western 
Europe would raise the land only twenty-one and 
a half feet. 

Yet how would the glory of the lowlands be 
13* 



2gS Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 



lost if the hills were not there from which the pas- 
tures, the gentler slopes, and the plains could be 
seen ! There would be a loss not only of the sub- 
limity of the mountains, but of the real beauty 
and picturesqueness of the level grounds. 

The analogy of mountain heights with life seems 
to me at this point to be quite striking. The 
amount of genius in the world, in contrast with the 
vast mass of common intelligence and capacity 
is very slight. Suppose it were possible to dis- 
tribute it into an average, — to pour it like pure 
spirit into the general liquid of lower grade, — the 
proof of mental power in the mass would hardly 
be perceptibly raised. But how much of the glory 
of life, even for the common intellect, depends on 
the few lofty geniuses of history! How much 
more value and beauty there is in ordinary human 
lot because we can rise to the height of a Dick- 
ens's sympathy with it, and then look around upon 
the byways and into the nooks and out upon the 
plains of our nature ! How much more interest 
there is in history because of the eminent appre- 
ciation of portions of the past we may all gain 
from the intellect and sympathetic learning of a 
Scott! What dependence we have upon minds 
like Newton and Herschell, to know anything of 
the glory of the sky, or upon Humboldt and Agas- 
siz, to comprehend the science and grandeur of 
the globe ! How much less resource and value 
there would be in our homes if it were not for our 
ability to go up on the ridges of Shakespeare's 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 299 

genius, and climb, by the rich books that a few 
dollars will place on our tables, up to the eleva- 
tion whence the historians, the artists, and the 
supreme thinkers have seen our life, and the land- 
scape of eternal truth ! 

All pure genius, brethren, is beneficent as the 
mountains. It invites up. God gives its capacity 
to very few. But the power of appreciating its 
work and service he gives to thousands of us. 
The highest genius always comes close to the 
mass of humanity and blesses it, and mentally we 
can all have a mountain-range in our life. By 
cultivating an interest in a few good books which 
contain the results of the toil or the quintessence 
of the genius of some of the most gifted thinkers 
of the world, we need not live on the marsh and 
in the mists. The slopes and ridges invite us. 
Our feet may be supported, now and then, above 
our natural elevation, and we may gain new views, 
truer relations between objects, grander lights, and 
a wider horizon of mysterious beauty. By that 
power of reading which God has endowed upon 
you, he enables you to say if you will, " I will lift 
up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh 
my help." 

And now, going higher still on the grade of 
imagery, let us see what symbols our subject fur- 
nishes for private experience. There are such 
things as mountain principles and mountain 
thoughts in the individual life. That , soul is in 
a lamentable condition that lives only on the 



300 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

flats of worldly and mercenary customs or on the 
wretched level of paltry pleasures. And there is 
no soul that must needs live thus ; for in every 
nature there are districts of higher thoughts, and 
latitudes of soaring aspirations, in the region of 
which, if it pleases, the mind may pitch its home. 
The trouble is that we do not keep company with 
our own best moods and seasons. Our experience 
with them is like our acquaintance with the moun- 
tains when we seek recreation, — a flying visit in 
the lull of business, or under pressure of ill- 
health, — a swift introduction to their glories, for- 
gotten soon after our return. 

There are many souls in which God creates 
mountains anew, every year. 

He stirs the deeps of their hearts by some pun- 
gent visitations of the Spirit, and straightway they 
send up aspirations for something better, — holy 
desires and momentary resolves that tower a great 
way over the poor plain on which they had lived. 
But alas ! there is no vigor in them, for they sink 
back almost as soon as they appear. It is as if 
nature should heave up, time after time, a sum- 
mit like Diablo, or Tamal Pais that guards the 
Golden Gate, or one of the pinnacles of the Sierra, 
and see it fall back continually into thin liquid 
deeps. The true soul has these visitations from 
God, these moral upheavals of its own essence, 
and they stiffen at once into principles ; they be- 
come lasting landmarks ; and from their summits 
and sides the freshening streams that make their 
lives fruitful flow down. 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 301 

But the principal trouble with people in Christian 
lands is that they will not practically recognize the 
high experiences and upland truths that do stand 
in the background of their souls. They shut their 
eyes to them ; they keep their faces from them. 
They lay out the little plantation of their expe- 
rience in some secluded nook of a valley, or 
hedged by thick groves of social custom, and try 
to forget that there is anything great and high for 
which life is given and towards which it should 
struggle. Comfort, pleasure, and self are the 
objects of their activity, and they keep themselves 
from looking after any higher plane of experience. 

Most of us that fail, fail in this way. We can- 
not be brought to say, " I will lift up mine eyes 
unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." 
Those hills do stand amid the scenery of our 
spirits, — we know they do, — the mighty sum- 
mits of moral truth, the elevations we have stood 
on in some great season of vision, the spiritual 
laws of Jesus Christ which our souls cannot deny, 
the examples of pure devotedness which our 
memory has appropriated, — there they stand 
within the boundary of our own consciousness, 
and we will not live upon their slopes or within 
their range. We burrow in the glens, or we hud- 
dle together out upon the moors, and then, some- 
times, we wonder that there is no more grandeur 
in life, and that its prospect is so poor. 

No grandeur can there be in life, no noble 
prospect can stretch out before us, unless we 



302 Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 

pitch the tent high up, or unless we keep the 
lofty places of our spiritual estate as peaks of 
vision for frequent visits. Socrates lived high up, 
and when he was in doubt or perplexity he went 
up higher to see how life looked from the lonely 
summit with its keen pure air. Paul lived high 
up, and he walked by the sight granted to him 
on the noble eminences. Jesus dwelt high up. 
We read that, at times, he sent the disciples away 
and retired into a mountain apart to pray, and 
when the evening was come he was there alone. 
The mountain to which he retired was inward 
more than outward. It was not only in some 
rare evening hours that he secluded himself thus. 
More than any other son of man he dwelt on the 
heights, and saw the glorious lights of God's love 
on the plains, and the wide-arching, all-embracing, 
heaven-embosoming nature. 

We are not to live outside the world, but in it, 
feeling its passions, working in its interests, striv- 
ing to do our duty in its trials. And yet large 
districts of our life and feeling should be above 
the world, on the Sierra heights from which the 
world and our toil and our home cares and our 
surroundings look noble, precious, bathed in light. 

Believe, O soul, that art placed in this mys- 
terious and glorious universe, that God formed 
thee from his Spirit for no mean purpose, but for 
a destiny nobler than thy highest aspirations have 
pointed to. Believe in the best thoughts and 
whisperings that visit thy heart. If thou dost 



Lessons from the Sierra Nevada. 303 

catch at times some gleams of the divinings of 
charity, of the glory of sacrifice, of the grandeur 
of faith, of the sky-piercing power of prayer, like 
mountain-peaks jutting through fogs, or slopes 
afar off in the horizon light, believe in them with 
more enthusiasm than in the stupid dust of the 
beaten roads ; make your home where they will 
inspire you, and where you can easily ascend 
their slopes, and see the world from a higher 
point, and feel the everlasting presence of God. 
Believe in them, for they are the mountain-prin- 
ciples and altar-piles of life. Breathe the air 
that is freshened on their heights. Drink of the 
streams that flow fresh from the channels in their 
sides. And in every season of doubt, temptation, 
or despair, lift up thine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh thy help. 

1863. 



XIX. 



LIVING WATER FROM LAKE TAEOE. 



" Let us go over unto the other side of the lake." — Luke viii. 

22. 

"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and 
power ; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they 
are and were created." — Revelation iv. 1 1. 



HEN one is climbing from the west, by the 



V V smooth and excellent road, the last slope 
of the Sierra ridge, he expects, from the summit 
of the pass, which is more than seven thousand 
feet above the sea, higher than the famous pass 
of the Splugen, or the little St. Bernard, to look 
off and down upon an immense expanse. He 
expects, or, if he had not learned beforehand, he 
would anticipate with eagerness, that he should 
be able to see mountain summits beneath him, 
and beyond these, valleys and ridges alternating 
till the hills subside into the eastern plains. 
How different the facts that await the eye from 
the western summit, and what a surprise ! We 
find, on gaining what seems to be the ridge, that 
the Sierra range for more than a hundred miles 
has a double line of jagged pinnacles, twelve or 
fifteen miles apart, with a trench or trough be- 




Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 305 



tween, along a portion of the way, that is nearly 
fifteen hundred feet deep if we measure from the 
pass which the stages traverse, which is nearly 
three thousand feet deep if the plummet is dropped 
from the highest points of the snowy spires. 

Down into this trench we look, and opposite 
upon the eastern wall and crests, as we ride out 
to the eastern edge of the western summit. In a 
stretch of forty miles the chasm of it bursts into 
view at once, half of which is a plain sprinkled with 
groves of pine, and the other half an expanse of 
level blue that mocks the azure into which its 
guardian towers soar. This is Lake Tahoe, an 
Indian name which signifies " High Water." We 
descend steadily, by the winding mountain-road, 
more than three miles to the plain, by which we 
drive to the shore of the lake ; but it is truly 
Tahoe, " High Water." For we stand more than 
a mile, I believe more than six thousand feet 
above the sea, when we have gone down from the 
pass to its sparkling beach. It has about the 
same altitude as the Lake of Mount Cenis (6,280 
feet) in Switzerland, and there is only one sheet 
of water in Europe that can claim a greater eleva- 
tion (Lake Po de Vanasque, 7,271 feet). There 
are several, however, that surpass it in the great 
mountain-chains of the Andes and of Hindostan. 
The Andes support a lake at 12,000 feet above 
the sea, and one of the slopes of the Himalaya, 
in Thibet, encloses and upholds a cup of crystal 
water, 15,600 feet above the level of the Indian 

T 



306 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 

Ocean, covering an area, too, of 250 square miles. 
I had supposed, however, that within the immense 
limits of the American Republic, or north of us 
on the continent, there is no sheet of water that 
competes with Tahoe in altitude and interest. 
But in Mariposa County of our State there are 
two lakes, both small, — one 8,300 feet, and the 
other 11,000 feet, — on the Sierra above the line 
of the sea. 

To a wearied frame and a tired mind what re- 
freshment there is in the neighborhood of this lake ! 
The air is singularly searching and strengthening. 
The noble pines, not obstructed by underbrush, 
enrich the slightest breeze with aroma and music. 
Grand peaks rise around, on which the eye can 
admire the sternness of everlasting crags and the 
equal permanence of delicate and feathery snow. 
Then there is the sense of seclusion from the 
haunts and cares of men, of being upheld on the 
immense billow of the Sierra, at an elevation near 
the line of perpetual snow, yet finding the air 
genial, and the loneliness clothed with the charm 
of feeling the sense of the mystery of the mountain 
heights, part of a chain that links the two polar 
seas, and of the mystery of the water poured into 
the granite bowl, whose rim is chased with the 
splendor of perpetual frost, and whose bounty, 
flowing into the Truckee stream, finds no outlet 
into the ocean, but sinks again into the land. 

Everything is charming in the surroundings of 
the mountain lake ; but as soon as one walks to 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 307 



the beach of it, and surveys its expanse, it is the 
color, or rather the colors, spread out before the 
eye, which hold it with the greatest fascination. 
I was able to stay eight days in all, amidst that 
calm and cheer, yet the hues of the water seemed 
to become more surprising with each hour. The 
lake, according to recent measurement, is about 
twenty-one miles in length, by twelve or thirteen 
in breadth. There is no island visible to break 
its sweep, which seems to be much larger than the 
figures indicate. And the whole of the vast sur- 
face, the boundaries of which are taken in easily 
at once by the range of the eye, is a mass of pure 
splendor. When the day is calm, there is a ring 
of the lake, extending more than a mile from 
shore, which is brilliantly green. Within this ring 
the vast centre of the expanse is of a deep, yet 
soft and singularly tinted blue. Hues cannot be 
more sharply contrasted than are these perma- 
nent colors. They do not shade into each other ; 
they lie as clearly defined as the courses of glow- 
ing gems in the wall of the New Jerusalem. It 
is precisely as if we were looking on an immense 
floor of lapis lazuli set within a ring of flaming 
emerald. 

The cause of this contrast is the sudden change 
in the depth of the water at a certain distance 
from shore. For a mile or so the basin shelves 
gradually, and then suddenly plunges off into 
unknown depths. The centre of the. lake must 
be a tremendous pit. A very short distance from 



308 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 



where the water is green, and so transparent that 
the clean stones can be seen on the bottom a 
hundred feet below, the blue water has been 
found to be fourteen hundred feet deep ; and in 
other portions soundings cannot be obtained with 
a greater extent of line. 

What a savage chasm the lake-bed must be ! 
Empty the water from it and it is pure and unre- 
lieved desolation. And the sovereign loveliness 
of the water that fills it is its color. The very 
savageness of the rent and fissure is made the 
condition of the purest charm. The lake does 
not feed a permanent river. We cannot trace 
any issue of it to the ocean. It is not, that we 
know, a well-spring to supply any large district 
with water for ordinary use. It seems to exist 
for beauty. And its peculiar beauty has its root 
in the peculiar harshness and wildness of the 
deeps it hides. 

Brethren, this question of color in nature, 
broadly studied, leads us quickly to contemplate 
and adore the love of God. If God were the 
Almighty chiefly, — if he desired to impress us 
most with his omnipotence and infinitude, and 
make us bow with dread before him, how easily 
the world could have been made more sombre, 
how easily our senses could have been created to 
receive impressions of the bleak vastness of space, 
how easily the mountains might have been made 
to breathe terror from their cliffs and walls, how 
easily the general effect of extended landscapes 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 309 

might have been monotonous and gloomy! If 
religion is, as it has so often been conceived to 
be, hostile to the natural good and joy which the 
heart seeks instinctively, — if sadness, if melan- 
choly, be the soul of its inspiration, and misery for 
myriads the burden of its prophecy, — I do not be- 
lieve that the vast deeps of space above us would 
have been tinted with tender azure, hiding their 
awfulness ; I do not believe that storms would 
break away into rainbows, and that the clouds of 
sunset would display the whole gamut of sensuous 
splendor ; I do not believe that the ocean would 
wear such joy for the eye over its awful abysses ; 
I do not believe that the mountains would crown 
and complete the general loveliness of the globe. 

I love the Quaker simplicity and calm. The 
Quaker conception of life and worship is part of 
the protest of the Spirit against errors and poverty 
in the Church. But God is not an infinite Quaker, 
though he is the infinite Friend. The world is 
not clothed with russet, and the flowers are not 
gray, and the winds are not forbidden to play on 
the forest harps. I bow to the strength of Cal- 
vinistic character, and its service in the education 
of the human race in the rugged resistance to 
tyranny and the rugged assertion of the holiness 
of God. But nature is not Calvinistic in color, 
and the tone of her landscapes is not that of the 
pictures of Salvator Rosa, as it would be if the 
Genevan theology represented the central truth of 
the Spirit. I know how much devotion to truth 



310 Living Waterfront Lake Tahoe. 

and how much self-sacrifice are represented by 
the cowl and girdle of the friar and by the simple 
bonnet of the nun. But there is only here and 
there a barren waste that wears the drapery of 
the monastery ; the harmonies of natural beauty 
run far up into the chords of cheer and joy. 

The world is strangely garnished by the Spirit 
if the truth of the Spirit is gloomy and ascetic. 
The color of the world is part of the Gospel of 
the world. It is an utterance of love ; it is a 
prophecy of grace. God hides his power and 
veils his awfulness in opulent beauty; and the 
most ragged and desolate wastes are chosen to 
display the rarest beauty. Think of the moun- 
tain precipices and crests as illustrating this prin- 
ciple. We call them utterly barren. We think 
of them as obstacles and hindrances to human 
power and purposes. But think of the loss to 
human nature if the summits of Mont Blanc and 
the Jungfrau could be levelled, and their jagged 
sides, sheeted with snow and flaming with ame- 
thyst and gold, should be softened by the sun 
and tilled for vines and corn ! Pour out over 
them every year all the wine that is wrung from 
the vineyards of Italy and France, and what a 
mere sprinkling in comparison with the floods of 
amber, of purple, and of more vivid and celestial 
flames with which no wine was ever pierced, that 
are shed over them by one sunrise, or that flow 
up their cold acclivities, contrary to the law of 
gravitation, at each clear sunset ! These are the 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 3 1 1 



crops which the intellect and heart find waiting 
and waving for them, without any effort or care of 
mortal culture, on the upper desolation of the 
hills. 

" So call not waste that barren cone 

Above the floral zone, 
Where forests starve ; 

It is pure use ; — 
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind 

Of a celestial Ceres and the muse ? " 

The flowers of nature do nothing to robe the 
globe in splendor in comparison with the rocks 
and snows of the uncultivated hills. God chooses 
the awful things to show off his tenderness. Is 
not this a theological fact and lesson as well as 
a fact of science ? Indeed, the most tender influ- 
ence that we are acquainted with in nature flows 
from the utmost desolation that we know anything 
about. I mean the full moonlight. How soft, 
how soothing, how kindly, how patient, how pitiful, 
it seems ! Yet science tells us of nothing so 
blasted, so terrible, as the moon itself. Sahara 
on this globe is almost a garden to it. The sage- 
brush plains between the Sierra and Salt Lake 
are a conservatory in contrast. There are pits 
in it nearly twenty thousand feet deep. There are 
mountains of scarred, scorched stone on it almost 
as high. There seems to be no water on its sur- 
face and no air swathing its frightful solitudes. 
One astronomer imagined that it was the hell of 
our planet. And yet perhaps its light. is the more 
soft and tender to us because of this barrenness. 



312 Living Waterfront Lake Tahoe. 

One of its chief uses, probably, is to publish the 
graciousness of the Infinite to our eyes and senti- 
ment. Compassion and love stream to us out of 
the sky from the bosom of seeming terror. So 
God swathes his power with grace, and by light 
and color tells us that he is not the Almighty 
simply, but the Almighty Father. 

And the color of the lake is a word from this 
natural Gospel. It covers the chasms and wounds 
of the earth with splendor. It is what the name 
of the lovely New Hampshire lake, Winnipiseogee, 
indicates, " The Smile of the Great Spirit." 

And this color is connected with purity. The 
green ring of the lake is so brilliant, the blue en- 
closed by it is so deep and tender, because there 
is no foulness in the water. The edge of the 
waves along all the beach is clean. The granite 
sand, too, often dotted with smooth-washed jas- 
pers and garnets and opaline quartz, is especially 
bright and spotless. In fact, the lake seems to be 
conscious, and to have an instinct against con- 
tamination. Several streams pour their burden 
from the mountains into it; but the impurities 
which they bring down seem to be thrown back 
from the lip of the larger bowl, and form bars of 
sediment just before they can reach its sacred 
hem. Dip from its white-edged ripples, or from 
its calm heart, or from the foam that breaks over 
its blue when the wind rouses it to frolic, and you 
dip what is fit for a baptismal font, — you dip 
purity itself. 



Living Water from Lake TaJioe. 313 

There is not a soul on the earth, probably, that 
is so pure, through grace, as this mountain goblet 
is by nature. A heart that rejects evil so spon- 
taneously, a heart whose agitation is so clear, a 
heart whose joy is so unstained, would be a heart 
that had attained perfection. It would be fit for 
heaven ; nay, it would be in heaven wherever it 
might dwell. We must look for such spirits only 
in the dwellers of the upper and calmer world, 
so far are we yet, on this earth, the most of us, 
the best of us, from reaching the level of nature ! 
It is only as we are pure that we are in accord 
with nature, and none of us are pure enough to 
be in full harmony with it. " The wicked are like 
the troubled sea, when it cannot rest \ whose 
waters cast up mire and dirt." But it is only the 
thin shore-waves of the stormy sea that cast up 
uncleanness ; its deeps in the tempest throw up 
no scum. The heart of man is more corrupt 
than any figure from ocean storms can express. 
And the purity of a lily's leaf, of a tree's robe of 
blossoms, of the light of a star, of the sunset 
radiance on mountain snow, has never yet been 
reached in any character save his who " was 
tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin." 

This purity of nature is part of the revelation 
to us of the sanctity of God. It is his character 
that is hinted in the cleanness of the lake and its 
haste to reject all taint. It is his character that is 
published in the spotless heavens and the unsoiled 
snow and the glory of morning on mountain- 
14 



314 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 

peaks. The purity of nature is the expression of 
joy, and it is a revelation to us that the Creator's 
holiness is not repellent and severe. God tries to 
win you by his Spirit, which clothes the world 
with beauty, to trust him, to give up your evil that 
you may find deeper communion with him, and to 
recognize the charm of goodness which alone is 
in harmony with the cheer and the purity of the 
outward world. 

I must speak of another lesson, connected with 
religion, that was suggested to me on the borders 
of Lake Tahoe. It is bordered by groves of 
noble pines. Two of the days which I was per- 
mitted to enjoy there were Sundays. On one of 
them I passed several hours of the afternoon in 
listening, alone, to the murmur of the pines, while 
the waves were gently beating the shore with their 
restlessness. If the beauty and purity of the lake 
were in harmony with the deepest religion of the 
Bible, certainly the voice of the pines was also in 
chord with it. 

The oracles of Greece are connected with the 
oak. And the lightness, the gayety, the wit, the 
suppleness, of the Greek mind find in the voice of 
the oak their fit representatives ; for the oak, 
though so stubborn and sinewy in its substance, 
is cheery and gay in its tone when the wind strikes 
it. But the evergreen trees, though so much 
softer in their stock, are far deeper and more 
serious in their music ; and the evergreen is the 
Hebrew tree. The Cedar of Lebanon is the tree 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 315 



most prominent when we think of Palestine and 
the clothing of its hills. As I lay and listened 
to the deep, serious, yet soft and welcome sound 
of those pines by the lake shore, I thought of the 
inspiration of old which had wakened such last- 
ing and wonderful music from the great souls of 
Israel. When we want knowledge or the quick- 
ening of intellect, we enter the groves of Greece ; 
when we would find quickening, when we would 
feel the deeps of the soul appealed to, we enter the 
deeper and more sombre woods of Palestine. The 
voice of the pine helps us to interpret the Hebrew 
genius. Its range of expression is not so great 
as that of the oak or the elm or the willow or the 
beech, but how much richer it is and more welcome 
in its monotony ! How much more profoundly 
our souls echo it ! How much more deeply does 
it seem to be in harmony with the spirit of the 
air ! What grandeur, what tenderness, what pa- 
thos, what heart-searchingness in the swells and 
cadences of its " Andante Maestoso," when the 
wind wrestles with it and brings out all its soul ! 

So the Hebrew stock was formed by Providence 
to yield a richer tone, a deeper music, naturally, 
than any other stock could give forth. And out 
of these Moses towers like a mighty pine, and 
David as a giant cedar, and the author of Job 
as a stalwart fir, and Jeremiah as a tall, sad hem- 
lock, and Isaiah as a stately arbor-vitae, to pour 
out such strains as never before had been wakened 
for mortal hearing by the Spirit's breath. 



3 16 Living Water from Lake la hoe. 

In the Twenty-third Psalm we hear the tender 
whisper of the air in a pine; in the Ninetieth, the 
strong autumn breath through its branches ; in 
the Eighteenth the trumpet of tempest blows blast 
after blast through its boughs, and bends its trunk 
while it roars with sublime passion. We cannot 
tell in the forest how much of the tone we hear is 
of the wind and how much of the tree. Neither 
can we tell in the great passages of the Bible 
what proportion of the music is of God and what 
proportion is of man. Those lofty souls were vis- 
ited by inspiration. Holy men spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost. But it was their 
faculties, their spirits, that were thus moved as 
branches by the breeze ; it was men that spake, 
we must remember ; and their quality, their per- 
sonality, their limitations, as well as the grandeur 
and veracity of the Spirit, was in all their utter- 
ance, and breathes from their pages still. 

I read under the pines of Lake Tahoe, on that 
Sunday afternoon, some pages from a recent 
English work that 'raises the question of inspira- 
tion. Is the Bible the word of God, or the words 
of men? It is neither. It is the word of God 
breathed through the words of men, inextricably 
intertwined with them as the tone of the wind 
with the quality of the tree. We must go to the 
Bible as to a grove of evergreens, not asking 
for cold, clear truth, but for sacred influence, for 
revival to the devout sentiment, for the breath of 
the Holy Ghost, not as it wanders in pure space, 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 317 

but as it sweeps through cedars and pines. No 
book is so deep, so rich, so tender, so awakening 
as the Bible after the freest criticism has been ex- 
pended upon it. Nothing can take the tone out 
of it. It will be as true, as deep, as uplifting, to 
the hearts of centuries to come, however cultured, 
as the voice of the pines will, in future ages, be 
the deepest natural music that the human ear can 
receive. 

And now that the evergreens of the lake shore 
have carried us, by one law of association, to 
Palestine and the Bible, let me ask you to bear in 
mind, further, that the shore and waves of a 
mountain lake are connected forever with the 
deepest religion of the Bible and of the world. 
The sea of Galilee, as it is often called in Scrip- 
ture, is a lake, its true name being " the lake of 
Gennesareth." The earliest ministry, and many 
of the most impressive incidents of the experience 
of Jesus, are associated with it. The Mount of 
the Beatitudes is not far off from its bank. Ca- 
pernaum was on its shore. Magdala also, where 
one of the Biblical Marys lived, and from which 
our word Magdalen is derived, was in part washed 
by its waves. 

When we walk by the bright sand of Tahoe, 
and see the fishermen's nets which have just dis- 
gorged their beautiful prey, we think how the 
Christian Church began ; we think of one walk- 
ing on the beach of a smaller lake, and calling 
Andrew and Philip, and Simon Peter and James 



3 1 8 Living Waterfront Lake Tahoe. 

and John, from their rude toil, to be " fishers of 
men." And as we look upon the unlettered men 
that earn their bread by the fisheries of Tahoe, we 
ask ourselves again, what must have been the 
power in the soul of Jesus that has caused the 
great cathedrals of the world to rise in honor of 
craftsmen by nature, not distinguished from those 
who ply their calling under the shadows of the 
Sierra ? We sail out upon our inland lake, and 
we notice, around one lovely cove of it, a farm on 
which grain is just lifting its prophecies of green. 
And we think then of the mystic crop that has 
sprung up from the seeds scattered on the bor- 
ders of the lake of Galilee, when Jesus watched 
the sowing and spoke his parable. The farmer 
that sowed that day expected his harvest from 
that very soil in the early summer. It has sprung 
up a million fold, in hearing hearts of every race 
and century. We enjoy the beauty of some of 
the wild-flowers of the neighborhood, in a visit to 
our mountain gem ; and the thought comes to us 
of the lily-text from which, near the lake of Gali- 
lee, the deepest sermon of the Gospel was un- 
folded. We sail out upon our sheet of water 
when it is placid, and there is hardly breeze 
enough to fill the sails. Suddenly a flaw from a 
cold snowy canon strikes us, and crowds the ves- 
sel into peril. I was out in one of them in a little 
boat, that could scarcely live in the quick turbu- 
lence of the water. And we think of him who 
slept in the hinder part of a boat on a pillow in 



L iving Water from Lake TaJioe. 3 1 9 

such a tempest, and who arose and rebuked the 
lake billows from a divine inward calm, saying 
simply, "Peace, be still!" We look across the 
water to cliffs of bare rock opposite belonging to 
another Territory, and we remember that it was 
on the other side of Gennesareth, amid the deso- 
lation of the mountains on the east, that the 
demoniacs were healed by the potent pity of 
Christ ; and then we think of the more wonderful 
miracles his Spirit has wrought in these latter 
years in healing the maniac mind and restoring it 
to friends and home. We sail out upon the lake 
at night, and the scene disposes us to read prop- 
erly the story of his walking on the waves to the 
terrified disciples, — symbol of the light and com- 
fort which the visit of Christ has brought in 
countless instances to hearts tossed on the billows 
of affliction. We look at a distant shore in the 
early morning, and we think of the last meal of 
the Saviour with his Apostles. " For " the Last 
Supper " was not the last meal. This was a 
morning repast, after the resurrection, on the 
shore of the lake of Gennesareth. Peter had re- 
turned to his occupation as fisherman in Galilee, 
when the Crucifixion took place in Jerusalem. 
He was in his boat on the lake by the bank of 
which he was first called, when just after dawn a 
voice came to him from one standing on the shore. 
John was with him in the boat, and recognized 
the tone and accents of Christ. Peter girt his 
fisher's coat about him, plunged into the lake, 



320 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 

and swam to land, about three hundred feet dis- 
tant. Their Lord had already prepared a fire of 
coals on which fish was broiling for them ; and on 
the borders of the lake at sunrise, Simon Peter, 
and Thomas, and Nathanael, and James, and 
John, and two others whose names we know not, 
partook of the bounty of the risen Christ, and 
heard the question recorded for us in the closing 
chapter of St John, — " Simon Peter, lovest thou 
me ? " The answer came, " Thou knowest that I 
love thee." Then the answer, which shows how 
all thoughts of personal honor were put away 
even from the triumphant Son of God, " Feed my 
sheep ! " 

The Jewish Rabbis had a tradition which they 
expressed thus : " Seven lakes have I created, 
saith the Lord; but out of them all I have chosen 
none but the lake of Gennesareth." How have 
these words been fulfilled, in ways of which the 
Rabbis never dreamed. It is the chosen lake of 
Providence. Its dimensions are not large. It 
measures only thirteen miles in length by six .in 
breadth. It is nothing in size, and hardly in 
charm, contrasted with Lucerne or Como, Maggiore 
or Lugano. But it is the most sacred spot of the 
world. It does not lie high up over the ordinary 
homes of men. Nay, it is in a strange depression 
on the globe. It is more than six hundred feet 
below the level of the sea. Yet it is the fountain- 
head of a living water that has flowed equally to 
palaces and huts, and that has quenched a thirst 



Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 321 

in souls of all conditions beyond the power of this 
world's wine. Gennesareth has been at once the 
fountain-head and the baptismal font of the 
globe. The truth that first fell upon its shores 
has cast a glory, by association, upon all other 
inland lakes, and indeed has illumined all nature. 
We understand and appreciate other lakes, only 
as we have in our hearts something of the spirit 
that was taught there. 

In my Sunday musing by the shore of our lake, 
I raised the question, — Who were looking upon 
the waters of Tahoe when Jesus walked by the 
beach of Gennesareth ? Did men look upon it 
then ? and if so were they above the savage level, 
and could they appreciate its beauty? And 
before the time of Christ, before the date of 
Adam, however far back we may be obliged to 
place our ancestor, for what purpose was this 
luxuriance of color, this pomp of garniture ? 
How few human eyes have yet rested upon it in 
calmness, to drink in its loveliness ! There are 
spots near the point of the shore where the hotel 
stands, to which not more than a few score intel- 
ligent visitors have yet been introduced. Such a 
nook I was taken to by a cultivated friend. We 
sailed ten miles on the water to the mouth of a 
mountain stream that pours foaming into its green 
expanse. We left the boat, followed this stream 
by its downward leaps through uninvaded nature 
for more than a mile, and found that it flows from 
a smaller lake, not more than three miles in cir- 
14* u 



322 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 

cuit, which lies directly at the base of two 
tremendous peaks of the Sierra, white with im- 
mense and perpetual snow-fields. The same ring 
of vivid green, the same centre of soft deep blue, 
was visible in this smaller mountain bowl, and 
it is fed by a glorious cataract, supported by 
those snow-fields, which pours down in thundering 
foam, at one point, in a leap of a hundred feet to 
die in that brilliant color, guarded by those cold, 
dumb crags. 

Never since the creation has a particle of that 
water turned a wheel, or fed a fountain for human 
thirst, or served any form of mortal use. Perhaps 
the eyes of not a hundred intelligent spirits on 
the earth have yet looked upon that scene. Has 
there been any waste of its wild and lonely 
beauty ? Has Tahoe been wasted because so few 
appreciative souls have studied and enjoyed it? 
If not a human glance had yet fallen upon it, would 
its charms of color and surroundings be wasted 
charms ? 

No, brethren ; we must test uses in this universe 
by a higher thought. Though no form of secular 
service could be won out of Lake Tahoe, it would 
fulfil a noble and glorious purpose if it gave 
sacred pleasure to human visitors. And though 
no human eyes should ever look upon it, it would 
serve a holy purpose, as a gem of the Divine art, 
by giving pleasure to the Almighty. "Thou art 
worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and 
power : for thou hast created all things, and for 



Living Water from Lake TaJwe. 323 



thy pleasure they are and were created." The 
Infinite mind and art rejoices in the glory of 
his creations. Is our poor appreciation the 
measure of his intention or success in the won- 
drous order of the heavens, the glory of the sea, 
the magnificence of mountain-peaks by sunset 
and dawn ? No. It is to express the fulness of 
his thought, the overflow of his art, the depth 
of his goodness, and to enjoy the expression of 
it, that God compacts the globes in space, and 
adorns them with splendors like the Himalaya 
and Andes, and sprinkles upon them the brilliance 
of lakes and seas, and binds them into mighty 
harmonies, and beholds them obey his central 
will 

Where we discern beauty and yet seclusion, 
loveliness and yet no human use, we can follow 
up the created charm to the mind of the Creator, 
and think of it as realizing a conception or a 
dream by him. He delights in his works. To 
the bounds of space their glory is present as one 
vision to his eye. And it is our sovereign priv- 
ilege that we are called to the possibility of sym- 
pathy with his joy. The universe is the home of 
God. He has lined its walls with beauty. He 
has invited us into his palace. He offers to us 
the glory of sympathy with his mind. By love of 
nature, by joy in the communion with its beauty, 
by growing insight into the wonders of color, 
form, and purpose, we enter into fellowship with 
the Creative art. We go into harmony with God. 



324 Living Water from Lake Tahoe. 

By dulness of eye and deadness of heart to natu- 
ral beauty, we keep away from sympathy with 
God, who is the fountain of loveliness as well as 
the fountain of love. But the inmost harmony 
with the Infinite we find only through love, and 
the reception of his love. Then we are prepared 
to see the world aright, to find the deepest joy in 
its pure beauty, and to wait for the hour of trans- 
lation to the glories of the interior and deeper 
world. 

1863. 



XX. 



THE COMET OF JULY, 1861. 

" And there appeared another wonder in heaven ; . . . . and his 
tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven." — Revelations xii. 
3,4- 

I AM glad at every new temptation to consider 
in the pulpit and the Church the wonders and 
laws of modern astronomy. 

Does it ever occur to you, brethren, how we 
waste truth ? Have you ever felt what a sad thing 
it is that so little of the vast accumulation of in- 
spiring knowledge should reach our deepest, our 
religious sentiments, to kindle and feed them? 
The most certain knowledge which men now hold 
is that which is gathered from the sky. Astron- 
omy, dealing with objects thousands of millions 
of miles away, and with forces that rule through 
limitless space, is the most symmetrical and firm 
of all the structures of science which have been 
reared by the human mind. Immeasurably more 
than David could have known, the heavens, as 
Herschel reads them, declare the glory of God. 
Yet how seldom do we think of the splendors and 
harmonies which a modern book of astronomy 
unveils as part of God's appeal to our wonder ; 



326 



The Comet of July, 1861. 



how seldom does the solemn light from the upper- 
most regions of immensity, the light of nebulae 
which science has broken up into heaps of suns, 
converge upon a human soul with power enough 
to stimulate devout awe and make the heart bend 
before the Creator of the universe ! 

When a new wonder breaks from the depths of 
the sky on our vision, we ought to turn the admi- 
ration or joy into which we have been startled to 
some permanent benefit, by seeking through its 
aid a clearer comprehension of the grandeurs of 
the heavens, which everybody can understand, or 
by a deeper response of the devout sensibilities 
to the glories we had slighted. 

Let the strange fire which burst with beauty 
upon our northern heavens last week, and which 
is now fading swiftly from sight, be the means of 
instructing us more seriously in the wisdom of His 
providence who " telleth the number of the stars 
and calleth them all by their names." 

This last passage is from the Bible. It is sin- 
gular that the Bible makes no allusion to comets. 
It is very rich in astronomical passages and im- 
agery. Ancient literature cannot compare for a 
moment with the prophets, the Psalms, and the 
Book of Job, in the majesty and gorgeousness of 
the poetry connected with the vastness of the 
heavens and the order of its lights. But not once 
is any of the wild fires that rush across the arch 
of night depicted in its pages. 

There must have been many splendid and as- 



The Comet of yuly, 1861. 327 



tonishing comets seen in the Hebrew sky during 
the period in which the richest books of the Old 
Testament literature were written, for it is a pe- 
riod including several centuries ; and what makes 
the silence more striking is, that in ancient times 
comets excited great dread and superstitious fears 
as signs of disasters, or of the fierce anger of 
heavenly powers. But the Hebrew imagination, 
which loved the vast, the stormy, the vague in na- 
ture as a suggestion of the Infinite, never touched 
the mystery of these corsair-lights among the calm 
stars ; never used them as portents of evil to na- 
tions hostile to the holy laws ; never conceived 
them as swords in the hand of Jehovah to punish 
a guilty heathen kingdom or smite a rebel He- 
brew state. The order and customs of the heav- 
ens are reflected in the prophetic literature, like 
the constellations of the zenith, in a waveless sea. 

But the order in the heavens is revealed to us 
through comets more splendidly than in any other 
way. When I first looked upon the brilliant stran- 
ger in our heavens, some two weeks ago, I was 
troubled that I could not know its history. I 
wanted the answer to the questions, " Have you 
ever visited this quarter of the universe before?" 
" Is our sun a stranger to you, or have you felt his 
rein upon you in former circuits around him ? " 
" Are you the long-expected comet which terrified 
Europe in 1556, before it was widely believed in 
civilization that our earth was only a small and 
moving satellite of the imperial sun ? " 



328 The Comet of jfidy, 1861. 



It has been supposed by prominent astronomers 
that the comet of 1556 was a member of our solar 
system, and revolves around the sun in about three 
hundred years. Its return has been predicted in 
1858 or in i860 or 1861, and I could not but re- 
gret that, when the comet burst into view, it was 
not able to announce to the beholders its identity 
and its place in the order of the firmament. 

But then, I said to myself, it will soon be known 
whence and who this new-comer is. Swift as he 
flies, lawless as he seems, speedily as he will dis- 
appear on his retreat from the sun, it will soon be 
known and published what his history is, and 
whether human eyes have ever looked upon him 
before. After three or four patient observations 
with a telescope, the skilled astronomers will de- 
cipher in what curve the new visitor is moving. 
They will tell the speed of its flight. They will 
announce from what depths of space it rushed, 
and whether or not it has crossed the track of the 
planets that swing around the sun ; and although 
no accurate observance was made of its position 
in the heavens before, although it may appear in 
different size and splendor now, although no hu- 
man eyes even with a powerful telescope have ever 
been or will ever be able to follow a thousandth 
part of its immense ellipse, they will declare with 
the same surety as if they had then been living 
and had seen it, if it be the same flaming meteor 
that swept over Europe three hundred years ago, 
— more than a half-century before the foundations 



The Comet of July, 1861. 329 



of our America were laid, ten generations distant 
in the history of man ! 

A modern French atheist has ridiculed the ex- 
clamation of David, " The heavens declare the 
glory of God ! " He says that the heavens de- 
clare the glory of Kepler and Newton and La 
Place. David is right, and so is the Frenchman 
right in what he affirms, though he is insane in 
what he denies. The magnificence of the sky 
ought not to abase human nature with a feeling 
of worthlessness. The greatness of man is writ- 
ten in star-type as well as the infinitude of God. 
Nothing less than an intellect kindled from the 
Perfect Reason could have discerned the reach 
and detected the laws, and foreannounced the 
motions of the heavens. It is the glory of New- 
ton and Herschel that the heavens display, — the 
glory of intellect, one ray of which is in the gen- 
ius that has studied the heavens, and before which 
the mind that unrolled and spotted and sustains 
them is as if the whole sky were one overpower- 
ing sunlike flame. David himself connects, in 
the sublime Eighth Psalm, the glory of the heav- 
ens with the majesty of human nature: "When 
I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, 
Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him, 
and the son of man that thou visitest him ? " But 
he instantly exclaims, "Thou hast made him a 
little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him 
with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have 



330 The Comet of yuly, 1861. 



dominion over the works of thy hands." Oi.e 
cannot say before the heavens, " man is nothing 
in presence of the universe ! " The lifetime of 
man seems nothing in presence of the universe, — 
its vastness, order, and persistence. But man 
seems sublime in presence of the universe, for its 
glory is the glory of thought and wisdom, and his 
intellect penetrates to these, discloses and inter- 
prets them. It is only about a year ago that a 
chart was prepared for an American scientific as- 
sociation, showing all the eccentricities in the path 
of one of the planets (Vesta) in the last five hun- 
dred thousand years. The Almighty has made 
the human intellect for partnership in the deeps 
of his counsels and the majesty of his thoughts. 

In the year 1456, before the true theory of the 
heavens was known, before the birth of Coperni- 
cus and of modern science, a comet appeared 
over Europe which excited very wide and deep 
alarm. Its trail was of surpassing brilliancy, and 
reached two thirds of the distance from the hori- 
zon to the zenith. It was almost universally be- 
lieved to be connected with the powers of evil in 
nature, and the Roman pope, Calixtus Third, is- 
sued a bull against it, putting it under anathema, 
in order to protect the Christian world from its 
malign influence. I do not know how soon after 
this papal manifesto the monster began to fade 
from the sky, nor do I know whether its disap- 
pearance was attributed to the virtue of the priestly 
edict. We know only that the people were greatly 



The Comet of yuly, 1861. 331 



comforted that the Holy Father attempted to whip 
back the intruder from the peaceful fold of the 
heavens, and that the superstitious fear and the 
equally superstitious relief are adequate represen- 
tations of the feeling with which comets were re- 
garded before the birth of modern science. 

Now look on this picture. In the year 1682, 
about the time that the law of universal gravita- 
tion was demonstrated, a remarkable comet was 
seen on" the sky over Europe. Halley, a great 
English mathematician and friend of Newton, at- 
tempted to compute its orbit. He announced that 
it travelled across the track of Jupiter and Saturn, 
and that it would recede from the sun to a dis- 
tance of thirty-four hundred millions of miles be- 
fore it would bend around for its returning: flight. 
He declared that it was the same meteor which 
had frightened the civilized world so intensely in 
1456. It was traced back to the year 1006, when 
its trail presented the appearance of an awful 
sickle blazing near the zenith. Even before the 
birth of Christ its identity was detected with the 
comet at the birth of King Mithridates, which is 
said to have equalled the sun in splendor. 

Halley boldly announced these results, and pre- 
dicted that it would return to be visible in Europe 
late in the year 1758 or early in 1759. This was 
the first prophecy ever made concerning one of 
these lawless and baleful fires. 

The world was amazed to find that science, then 
only in its infancy, dared handle these prodigies 



332 The Comet of jfitly, 1861. 



in this way, and dared believe that they were har- 
nessed by beneficent and unyielding laws. It was 
almost impossible to convince men that it was not 
an arrogant delusion, and long after Halley was 
in his grave, as the year 1758 drew near, his proph- 
ecy that the comet would return excited very deep 
interest. 

Two French astronomers, assisted by a lady, 
undertook to determine what its visible path would 
be in the heavens, and at what precise time it 
would approach nearest the sun. For six months 
the three devoted themselves to calculations, not 
stopping even at meals, and one of them con- 
tracted an illness which shattered his constitution. 
As the result, they predicted in what month it 
would pass around the sun unless there should be 
an unknown planet beyond Saturn ; in that case 
the comet might be hastened nearly thirty days. 

Halley, seventy-six years before, when it faded 
away, had declared that it would reappear late in 
1758 or early in 1759. It was first detected on 
Christmas Day of 1758. The French mathema- 
ticians announced that it would approach nearest 
to the sun on the nth of April, 1759. It reached 
that point on the 13th of March ; and there was 
another planet, then unknown, revolving beyond 
the orbit of Saturn, which accounted for a large 
part of this slight error of less than thirty days. 
When the comet receded from Europe after that 
visit, it bore the name of " Halley," and wears it 
now, I doubt not, wherever it wanders in the cold 
and distant darkness, in the sight of angels. 



The Comet of July, 1861. 333 



It was expected again in 1835. Computations 
were made once more with the most rigid care. 
Its exact path and point of reappearance were 
announced. The test was anxiously awaited, and 
after its wild journey of seventy-six years, it burst 
into our sky at the point foretold, and reached the 
goal nearest the sun within nine days of the date 
which had been pledged by mathematicians. 

The astronomers did not then know that there 
was still another planet invisible belonging to our 
system in the immensity of space. When the 
comet shall reappear in 19 11, it will not be sur- 
prising if the time of its curve around the sun 
shall be predicted to a day by the astronomers 
then alive. In 1456 the Pope launched against 
it his anathema as a horror, hostile and hateful to 
God and the Church. Yet how little they knew 
then of the size of the monster ! How little they 
knew that its diameter at the head was forty times 
that of the earth ! In 1835 it was measured as it 
bent around the sun. It was found to be three 
hundred and fifty-seven thousand miles in diam- 
eter, with a trail a hundred millions of miles in 
reach. And then the Churches in Christendom 
drew lessons from it of confidence in the vast and 
beneficent order among the wild forces amid which 
our life is cast. 

But since Halley's time, in 1682, an immense 
deal of work has been done in determining the 
paths and periods of comets. It has been found 
that there are thirteen which regularly wheel 



334 The Comet of July, 1861. 

around the sun, and never retreat from it beyond 
the orbit of the planet Saturn ; that there are six 
which cut ellipses about like Halley's, receding as 
far as the planet Uranus, and completing their 
orbits each in about seventy years, and that there 
are more than twenty which plunge beyond the 
farthest known planet of the solar system, and yet 
move in such curves that they must return to the 
sun. 

The comet of 1858 was one of the last class. 
When it first appeared in that year, it was thought 
that it was the long-expected stranger of 1556, 
which was suspected by astronomers to move in 
an orbit of about three hundred years. But it 
was soon found that its range in the universe is 
far wider. It requires something like two thou- 
sand years for its revolution. It had never been 
seen in the Christian era. Perhaps it is the same 
with the brilliant one seen in old Rome forty-three 
years before Christ, and which was then believed 
to be the soul of Julius Caesar, who had been 
recently assassinated, hovering over the world. 

If it appeared then in the form of a scimeter, 
which it first assumed when we were permitted to 
see it in 1858, it might have been associated with 
that heroic, all-conquering soul, except that it 
seemed too sacred to be connected with mortal 
strife and passions. It seemed to us a holy fal- 
chion, a flaming brand for the spirit of the arch- 
angel Michael. And soon it changed into the 
curve rather of an immense pen, as though the 



The Comet of "July, 1861. 



335 



Creator were moving it to write his name on the 
blank darkness of space. On it plunged toward 
the sun till it approached to within nearly half the 
distance which our earth keeps from him, and 
wheeled around with a speed of one hundred and 
twenty-seven thousand miles an hour, and with 
a trail fifty-one millions of miles long and ten 
millions broad at the end, commenced its rush 
outwards into the darker spaces. It will move 
off, the astronomers tell us, slackening its speed 
gradually, crossing the earth's track and that of 
Mars and the asteroids, and Jupiter and Saturn 
and Uranus and Neptune, still out and out for a 
thousand years, beyond where the most powerful 
telescopes could discern it as a faint stain on the 
cold gloom, its rate of motion reduced at last to 
four hundred and eighty miles an hour, and then, 
ten centuries hence, it will wheel again and begin 
a leisurely return from a point thirty-five thousand 
millions of miles away. Hundreds of years it will 
travel back before reaching the outermost confines 
of the sun's planetary fold. Then it will hurry on 
its journey, and, flying faster and faster, blaze in 
its wild sword-shape or beautiful pen-curve for the 
admiration of the dwellers on this globe about the 
year 4000, when the astronomers that studied it 
in 1858 shall be studying it in heaven, not seeing 
"through a glass darkly," but understanding its 
essence, and comprehending its mission as an ex- 
pression of the thought of God. 

If such spaces and measures of distance seem 



336 The Comet of yuly, 1861. 



awful and make the brain reel, what shall we say 
or think on being told that when the comet shall 
reach its outpost, thirty-five thousand millions of 
miles away, it would have to keep on and travel a 
thousand times farther in order to reach the near- 
est fixed star ? 

But there are comets in contrast with which this 
last one is quite a home body in our system, too 
timid to wander far from the domestic hearth and 
fire. The curves of several have been calculated, 
and found to be such that it will take them over 
eight thousand years to complete their sweep. In- 
deed, astronomers by rigid mathematics have 
announced that the period of a comet which ap- 
peared in 1780 is over seventy-five thousand 
years ; that one came within our system in 1830 
which will return in sixty thousand years ; and that 
the orbit of one which passed its perihelion Oc- 
tober 17, 1844, is such, reaching one hundred and 
forty times as distant from the sun as the dim cold 
planet Neptune, so far out that the sun would be 
lost to its view, its orbit so immense as to require 
the constant motion of one hundred thousand 
years to sweep it. Even then it would not have 
begun to reach the most neighborly of the suns 
that we call fixed stars. 

Is it not strange beyond all explanation that 
such hazy masses can preserve their identity and 
their form in the wonderful changes of tempera- 
ture and condition through which they move ! 
Think of the fleecy globe held by the gravitation 



The Comet of July, 1 86 1. 



337 



of the sun millions of miles beyond where the sun 
is visible, and forced by it to bend and begin to 
return ! Think of the cold, as well as darkness, 
of that depth in space, — nothing but starlight, 
bleak, bitter, perpetual night ! And when it 
reaches the confines of our system on its return, 
think of the increasing velocity of its plunge tow- 
ards the sun, seeing it grow from a small to a 
larger star, then to the size which it shows to us, 
then swelling and swelling as it flies nearer, till at 
last, as in the case of the comet of 1680 and 
also of 1843, it grazes the sun's vesture with its 
atmosphere, plunging into a radiance and heat 
twenty-six thousand times greater, even, than that 
of Marysville and Sacramento, — a heat which 
Newton calculated to be two thousand times 
greater than red-hot iron, — and still not lost in 
it, but bending around it and escaping from it as 
safe as the loyal Hebrews from the fiery furnace 
of the King of Babylon ! 

The great Newton imagined that comets might 
be feeders of the sun, destined all of them, at 
some time, to plunge into and renovate its globe 
of flame. He confessed his belief that the one 
which appeared in 1680 would fall into the sun 
after five or six revolutions. And whenever that 
time shall come, he said, " The heat of the sun 
will be raised by it to such a point that our globe 
will be burnt, and all the animals upon it will 
perish." 

There is no reason for our being frightened at 
15 v 



338 The Comet of July, 1861. 



any peril from this particular cause, for the comet 
of 1680 does not complete its orbit in much less 
than nine thousand years, and if it requires five 
or six revolutions to be sucked into the solar 
jaws, they will be very distant descendants of 
ours that will suffer from the raised temperature 
of our planet. And although the great name of 
Newton is affixed to the speculation, there is no 
necessity that anybody shall be disturbed by it. 
For we see now that God has other methods of 
service for comets than to see them shovelled into 
the sun's hungry heat. He has stored the sun 
himself with a repellent energy that saves them, 
and that furnishes to them their brilliant trail 
and exquisite grace of curve, as a symbol of his 
mighty charity. The sun is no cannibal father 
like the old god Saturn of mythology, eating his 
children. And the solar system, the more mi- 
nutely it is studied, becomes the more vivid and 
vast an expression of order and love ! 

The danger has often been debated of a col- 
lision between our globe and a comet, and the 
probable results have been discussed. Since as- 
tronomy has become a science, the fear has become 
frequent and sometimes intense. In fact, no dread 
of this kind was experienced in former times 
when these apparitions excited superstitious ter- 
ror. In 1832 there was wide-spread alarm at the 
possibility of a catastrophe from such a cause, 
when it was announced that Biela's comet would 
cross the earth's track. Had the comet been four 



The Comet of y?ily, 1861. 



339 



days later the earth would have plunged into it to 
a depth of more than six thousand miles. But it 
is doubtful if we should have received any more 
damage than a cannon-ball from a Columbiad 
would in striking a floating mass of thistle-down. 
Some of them seem to have in the very thickest 
part of the nucleus nothing more solid to resist a 
planet, whirling, like ours, more than a thousand 
miles a minute, than the fog that drifts at evening 
into the Golden Gate, would offer to a Pacific mail- 
steamer under full steam. It could be smitten 
with as little damage as the ghost in Hamlet by 
the truncheon of Horatio. " It is as the air, in- 
vulnerable, and our weak blows malicious mock- 
ery." If there are no deadly gases in their mists, 
it is certain that many a comet which has visited 
our system might have been struck by the earth 
without our knowledge that we were experiencing 
anything more than a long spell of Boston east- 
wind. 

With others, however, it would be different. 
The glorious comet of 1858 had a solid nucleus 
denser than granite, which astronomers were able 
to measure and weigh, about four hundred and 
fifty miles in circumference. This was a very 
small pit for the vapory pulp, which was forty thou- 
sand miles in diameter. But as a globe of granite 
only thirty miles in circumference would weigh six 
millions of millions of tons, neither earth nor comet 
would stand such gun-practice as their meeting in 
space would give, — each flying twenty miles a 



340 



The Comet of ^tily, 1861. 



second. The comet might get the worst of it ; but it 
would be apt to make the country where it struck 
acquainted pretty quickly with the central fire, and 
open a good piece of testimony for geologists. 
Let us be thankful that we may rest confident — 
not knowing what a night may bring forth as to 
the return or irruption of these hurrying visitors — 
that the switches of the ecliptic, where these trains 
may cross, are never out of order, and are watched 
by a Will that seeks not chaos and destruction, 
but order and safety ! 

And now, suppose that the question is seriously 
asked and urged, "What are the uses of these 
flimsy and buoyant splendors that stream across 
the night ? " how shall we answer ? 

We may conjecture that they are related to 
electric forces and currents in the solar system, 
that they are exchange messengers and equalizers 
in space. The comet of 1858 was studied very 
closely by very powerful telescopes as it came near 
the sun. There was tremendous turmoil in its 
globe of vapor. The envelope seemed to rise 
from the nucleus at the rate of thirty miles an 
hour. It seemed as though nothing could prevent 
the ghastly mass from being drawn by the sun's 
gravity into the jaws of its flame. But at the 
nearest point of approach an electric repellent 
influence went forth from the sun, more than 
twice as powerful as gravitation, driving off the 
brilliant trail from the nucleus, and saving the 
comet's mass from swift destruction. From depths 



The Comet of July, 1 86 r. 



341 



of space, which tire our calculation, the fleecy orb 
felt the sun's power and began to move towards 
it. It hastened as it grew nearer. Its speed 
grew frightful. It plunged like the dazzled and 
light-winged moth towards the central flame. But 
the sun, that had drawn it so far by its mere weight, 
now put forth the repellent force of its love to 
save it from dissipation, to store it with electric 
energy, perhaps for essential services and dis- 
bursements of mercy on its new career across the 
solar system into immensity. 

If such be not the material uses which these 
bodies, or rather spectres in space, are serving, we 
know not what to answer or what to guess. 

But suppose that we can find or imagine no 
palpable good of the physical order which they 
accomplish, what then ? Shall we account them 
useless ? Shall we think them mere blots on the 
creation ? One of our friends, during the meet- 
ing in this church for the Protection and Relief 
Society last Monday night, in the course of an ex- 
cellent and efficient speech, said that the present 
comet looked cold and selfish in its splendor, and 
that he longed to see its brilliance made produc- 
tive of bread on the solid earth. 

Bread is good ; yet man lives " not by bread 
alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the 
mouth of God." Do we not forget one of the 
great purposes of the creation when we relate it 
to physical needs, or to man in any sense exclu- 
sively ? God created nature for himself as well 



342 The Comet of July, 1861. 



as for us, for his own joy as well as for our exist- 
ence and comfort and education. What a sublime 
verse is that in the Book of Revelation, in the 
worship of the Elders : " Thou art worthy, O 
Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power : 
for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleas- 
ure they are and were created." 

God created the universe to express his thought, 
to realize what we may reverently call conceptions 
of genius, to reflect the deeps of his imagination, 
and so, by its marvels and order, to fill his own 
spirit with joy. It is not necessary, therefore, 
that everything, or the majority of things, should 
serve what we call material uses. If they serve 
artistic uses to the Creator of nature, they are 
sacred, — we should bend before them. Did 
Shakespeare think of the use of every line and 
phrase when he flung a glowing ornament into 
the stately cadences of a great tragedy ? Did 
Raffaelle think of the cost or uses of the pig- 
ments, when he poured a new flush of color upon 
a group, or left some exquisite line or tender 
witchery of expression, in the very excess of crea- 
tive opulence, to be immortal ? Does the archi- 
tect demand that every fragment of cornice or 
thread of tracery shall be of use in the statics 
of the building, or even that its beauty shall be 
only such as the mass of observers can appre- 
ciate ? No, such genius pours from its own 
treasury to embody its own vision and satisfy its 
own heart. 



The Comet of Jvtfy, 1861. 



343 



And the universe is God's creation for his con- 
tinual joy, that he may say ever, as when it was 
first completed, that " it is very good." 

The planets move with glorious order, but they 
swing in circles, one drawn outside of the other, 
circles that never intersect or interfere with each 
other. And they move on the same plane, too. 
A line drawn from the centre of the sun would 
cut nearly every planet out as far as Neptune. 
The order of such a system is a little stiff and 
tame. What if the comets are intended to vary 
it by the strange curves they carve in flame, no 
two alike, — by their wild shooting across the 
paths of the solid globes, and by their unbridled 
liberty of approach to the sun ? For the comets 
do not move on the plane of the ecliptic as planets 
do. Some of them play in it ; some cut it diag- 
onally from above ; some cut it in the same way 
from beneath ; some come straight up from below 
and loop the sun with their dishevelled fire and 
plunge down again ; some sweep perpendicularly 
from the zenith over the sun, dive under and 
around him, and mount again the dizzy heights of 
the abyss ; and some, the majority of those thus 
far seen, wheel about him and fly off in such a 
line that they can reappear within his influence. 

What a wondrous spectacle does this make the 
system ! There are immeasurably more comets 
than planets. Old Kepler said of them that they 
were thick as fishes in the sea. If it be true, as 
an old philosopher once said, that " God geome- 



344 



The Comet of ytdy> 1861. 



trizes," the comets are the chief sources of his 
artistic joy in space : they show the intricacies of 
the order to which his thoughts gave being ; they 
reveal how exact and beneficent are the awful 
forces in the system which suffer no interruption 
and no jar, although these corsair-strangers are 
running perpetually athwart the heavy-laden lug- 
ger planets in the ethereal sea. 

And think of the wild beauty of a great comet 
in contrast with a sober orb like ours ! Think of 
one like the monster of 181 1, its head more than 
a million of miles in diameter, immensely greater 
in volume than the sun, brushing the solar heat 
with its vapor, and then swiftly, as from a bulbous 
root, throwing off the spray of its blazing electric 
vapor a hundred millions of miles ! Such are 
the splendors connected with one solar system, 
wrought out by what we call its lawless and use- 
less elements. Remember that each fixed star is 
the sun of such a system. There are millions of 
suns around which, probably, not only the staid 
planets, but such reckless and fantastic shapes are 
crating their curves and shooting their thin fires. 
And then try to think what a spectacle the universe 
must be to the mind that holds it in vision from 
centre to outermost fringes of light, and ask if 
our word " uses " is the true one to measure these 
comet strangers by, or say if the song of the 
Elders is not rather the worthier philosophy. 

And thus we are led to see that one of the 
great uses of comets, for the human race, is to 



The Comet of yuly, 1861 345 

feed the sense of beauty, stir devout emotions, 
interpret the abysses of space, and educate the 
mind and soul in the uttered thoughts of God. If 
they make us wonder more, muse more, adore 
more, think more solemnly and yet with solemn 
joy of the play of God's power in space, and the 
amplitude and punctuality of his providence, they 
make life nobler, the heart more tender, the soul 
wiser ; they do us more good than if they simply 
dropped corn into our granary; they help to fit 
us for the work of the world to come. 

How sad it appears to some persons, and some- 
times perhaps to the wisest, that human life seems 
so short in contrast with some fresh measure or 
index of what the scale of time is in the universe. 
Halley and Newton studied the comet of 1682 
and prophesied its return in seventy-six years, — 
only three quarters of a short century. And yet 
such a mind as Newton's, the arch-intellect of cen- 
turies, the most august force on the planet, could 
not then be alive on the earth. The great comet 
of 1843 was found to revolve in three hundred 
and seventy-six years. Ten generations of star- 
students will be in their graves when it flings its 
splendor outward over space on its next visit. 
And the next time that the comet of 1858 " revis- 
its the glimpses of the moon," two thousand years 
of human science and story, with all their freight 
of human genius and human hearts, will have 
floated into the past. 

" How weak and frail and wretched is man I " 
15 * 



346 



The Comet of yidy, 1861. 



Yes, if comets blaze over his tomb ! But what if 
they do not? What if Newton mounts to be 
learner and teacher of a higher realm? What if 
Halley is professor of astronomy in a more favor- 
able academy ? What if Lalande is borne where 
calculations do not shake the constitution ! What 
if Laplace is wafted where he cannot doubt of God 
while he studies his geometry in wider heavens ? 
I do not believe that God accounts the student 
less worthy than the blackboard. I do not be- 
lieve that he made his pupils to die, and the dia- 
grams he has drawn for them, and for his own 
delight, though they be in star-fire, to be imper- 
ishable. 

The world to come has solemn spiritual condi- 
tions ; but we must not fail, either, to see that it 
is glorious as a sphere of mental training and ad- 
vance and intellectual victory and joy. One of 
the great mathematicians of the world has lately 
said that there is one set of curves connected with 
the solar system whose mathematical investigation 
would furnish abundant occupation for the most 
powerful human intellect for at least a hundred 
millions of years. He said this soberly in a care- 
fully written paper. It is for such purposes that 
God created powerful minds, that they may learn 
and enjoy and grow, and become teachers of 
others, and lead lesser minds into the paths and 
deeps of his own thought and wisdom. It is for 
such purposes, in part, that the heavens are bent 
over the habitation of spirits on this earth. It is 



The Cornet of yidy, 1861. 347 

for such purposes that the stranger-lights, though 
they bear no freight of minds in their wild track, 
move in their fantastic lines over space. And 
when the body breaks on this solid orb, it is to set 
the spirit free for the clearer and devouter study 
of astronomy on a higher plane of being, where 
the true souls shine themselves as stars for ever 
and ever. 

1861. 



XXI. 



RELIGIOUS LESSONS FROM METALLURGY. 

" The fining-pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold : but the 



" Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is 
the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it : 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two command- 
ments hang all the law and the prophets." — Matthew xxii. 37-40. 



HE Bible has a great deal of imagery drawn 



X from the ancient processes of reducing ores 
to represent the moral government of the world. 
And the agents of his providence always sit, ac- 
cording to the figure of Malachi, as refiners and 
purifiers of silver. 

To get the dross out of us, — this is the sover- 
eign aim of our training in this world. In educa- 
tion the main purpose is to free the mental facul- 
ties of the dross of sloth and prejudice. In active 
life the great success is in confirming the fibre 
of energy and character. In higher relations the 
object of the Almighty is to burn out the dross 
of the spirit, and make us noble and pure. The 
truth and influence of the Bible, the laws of retri- 
bution in society, the revelations in experience 



Lord trieth hearts." — 



Proverbs xvii. 3. 




Religions Lessons from Metallurgy. 349 



of the effects of moral disobedience, are furnace- 
heats to separate the good elements from the bad 
in character, and where this is impossible, to sep- 
arate the good characters from the bad. 

And now ask yourself, What is dross in human 
character? What do you represent by it when 
you use that word in your own thought and im- 
agery? Suppose you are inclined to avarice, 
the excessive love of money. If you think of 
your own character as lifted, strengthened, made 
better, do you think of that quality of avarice as 
untouched ? Do you think of it as stronger than 
it is now? Or do you think of it as weaker, as 
melted down in part, and poured off from your 
soul like scum ? Now consider profanity, levity, 
intemperance, lust, moral sluggishness, vanity, 
haughtiness, insolence of words or manners, ir- 
reverence, rebellion in feeling against Providence, 
— translate these into natural language, into the 
language of metals and the crucible, what are 
they? — valuable elements or foul ones, dross or 
gold? 

But take the converse qualities, — reverence, 
purity, zeal for good, aspiration, generous use of 
money, the spirit of sacrifice, charity, devotion to 
the will of God, — how do you represent these in 
your imagination ? I do not ask how the Bible 
represents them ; in what thrilling or fiery imagery 
prophets and apostles speak of them. But I ask, 
How do you think of them? When you see a 
character that represents these, do you sponta- 



350 Religioits Lessons from Metallurgy. 

neously say, or think, that he is a noble or an un- 
wise man ? Do you imagine that if he could be 
made still better he would lose any of these qual- 
ities, or would lose rather the qualities still at- 
tached to them that impede their exhibition a 
little and debase them ? You say at once these 
are the noble, these are the precious, elements of 
human nature and human life. These are the pure 
silver and gold of the moral world. 

Now, brethren, God is seeking to bring out 
these qualities into greater concentration and 
prominence by his moral government. Left to 
ourselves, to the wandering, undirected impulses 
of our constitution, mentally and morally, we 
should always be in the ore state. The hardships 
of life, the tough conditions that surround the 
attainment of truth and the training of character, 
are God's reducing and refining processes. The 
world is constructed on the principle of corre- 
spondences. The law for metallic ores is the law 
for character. By hammers and stamps and mills 
and furnaces and acids, He is at work upon us to 
beat out and expurgate the dross, and develop the 
latent good which the soul may show. 

I do not mean to maintain here that all the hard 
conditions of life can be explained by this figure, 
or by any figure or theory of man's device. A 
great deal in the ordering and permissions of Prov- 
idence can never be understood probably in this 
world. But a world without hardships, to such 
beings as we are, would be a far worse, a far 



Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 351 

more disastrous, world than the present. Adam, 
if he had stayed in Paradise, as the book of Gen- 
esis describes it, would have been a poorer crea- 
ture than his " fall " enabled him to be. What 
would a ton of ore, taken out in one slab, be 
likely to say, if it could be conscious, when car- 
ried to the batteries of the mill, and then washed 
for gold, and roasted to drive off sulphur, and 
pounded again, and mixed with quicksilver, and 
heated once more to drive off the mercury, 
and melted again into a mixed bar, and assayed, 
and still once more melted and granulated into 
cold water, and then gnawed by nitric acid, to take 
up the silver and leave the gold as sediment, and 
then precipitated from the acid as pure silver 
powder, and washed, and packed into cakes by 
hydraulic presses to squeeze the water out of it, 
and melted again in bars, and run through rollers, 
and punched, and milled, and stamped, — thus 
becoming fit to serve the daily necessities of civil- 
ization ? Suppose it should be told, half-way in 
the process, that all this was good for it, was part 
of a great plan, supremely wise, for its permanent 
benefit! Would it not be likely to say, "Why 
did you not leave me in my sluggish content in 
the darkness of the mine? I was happy there. 
I had no dream there of a higher and better lot. 
I should have never known these terrible buffets 
and scourgings and bitings and pressures if I 
had been left there. O for that gloom and calm 
again ! " 



352 Religions Lessons from Metallurgy. 

In its silver-bar state, afterwards, in its coin- 
state, will it say so ? It can look back, then, on 
the trials and pains, and see their meaning, and 
read their bitter but splendid benevolence. One 
of these days, when we get out of the crucible 
and beyond the laboratory, — out perhaps of the 
globe and the body, both of which to many of 
us are only one long crucible, or a swift series 
of transitions from the pestle to the flame, — 
we shall be able to comprehend the purposes of 
Providence ; we shall be able to see the whole 
truth underlying the wonderful exclamation of the 
Apostle, whose Hebrew dross was smitten off by 
one lightning stroke, leaving the Christian silver \ 
" I reckon that the sufferings of this present 
time are not worthy to be compared with the 
glory which shall be revealed in us ! " We see 
enough now to show that the best qualities of 
human nature are brought out and tested by diffi- 
culty and suffering. To the choice characters of 
the world God can say now, as the Spirit said 
through Isaiah, " I have refined thee, but not with 
silver : I have chosen thee in the furnace of afflic- 
tion." And if this world is designed not as the 
final state for the enjoyment of God, but as the 
state in which we get the preparation of quality 
within for the true knowledge and enjoyment of 
him, we find the whole secret of life, — of its ter_ 
rors and its hidden mercy, — when we follow the 
ore from its cave to its appearance as the clean 
silver and the flaming gold. 



Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 353 



Do not fail, either, to receive the searching 
lesson as to judgment hidden in this analogy. 
The ore is tested thoroughly as the final process of 
its history. The assayer, by balance and fire, de- 
termines exactly what its quality is and its worth. 
And the processes of God's government are 
taking us to judgment. It is to be known and 
seen one day just what we are. This is to be our 
judgment. It will not be, as unripe theologies 
foolishly maintain, an arbitrary opinion and decree 
of God. Nor can we escape it by shielding our- 
selves under the righteousness of the holy Christ. 
What we are is to be shown yet in the moral 
world. The day is coming when, by the opera- 
tions of spiritual law, every soul will be assayed 
and stamped, and pass for what it is — no more, 
no less — in the realm of souls. To the great 
judgment of truth you and I, and all the millions 
living, are moving with every heart-beat, and 
nothing can save us from its severity and its re- 
wards. " The fining-pot is for silver, and the fur- 
nace for gold ; but the Lord trieth the hearts." 

But I ought not to pass from the general topic 
of the refinement of dross from men, as part of 
the intention of hardship in the moral govern- 
ment of the world, without alluding to the expe- 
rience of our nation in its present struggle. 

What should this war, with its terrible flames 
and hissings and thunder-hammers be, but a 
process of purification for the imperial republic? 
What does God intend for us less than that? 
w 



354 Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 

The only payment for the awful expenditure of 
blood and hopes is that the nation shall come 
out, not only whole, but homogeneous, — sounder 
in its system of labor, nobler and more symmetri- 
cal in its civilization, the cinders and clinker, 
the slag and scum, left by years of guilt and folly, 
ought to be driven off by the frightful heats and 
fury of the war. Then our children will bless 
these battle-years, the debt we leave will look 
cheap to them; and men who study our strife 
from the distance of a century will say, "Then 
God sat by the furnace, and smelted America 
till her crime was purged, and she became pure 
gold." 

If we pass now to consider sectarian divisions 
and strifes in the Christian Church, we can gain 
some help in a right estimate of them, and for a 
wise charity, from analogies in the science of 
metallurgy. The great object of the New Testa- 
ment and of Christianity is to increase religious 
qualities practically in the world, to add pure 
working forces to life, so that men will be nobler 
and happier in themselves and in their relations 
to each other. No church is the New Testa- 
ment. No church is Christianity. You might 
as well say that a mill is a mine, or that one set 
of mills is all the mineral wealth of the world. 
Different churches apply Christianity, or pure 
religion, to human nature, according to some 
peculiar method, custom, or theory, in order to 
refine and ennoble the characters of men, just as 



Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 355 

different mills apply different methods of reduc- 
tion and different mineral theories to ores. 

There is a great deal to be said, in ' the contro- 
versy between different methods of reduction, in 
favor of some processes as being very much wiser 
than others. And what has been the result? 
Partisanship has not triumphed. Broad views 
have been victorious. God has made different 
kinds of ores, and equally rich in different kinds. 
For some kinds of mineral one process is admi- 
rable; for other kinds a very different treatment is 
essential. And human nature is analogous. Evils 
are thrown off from men, and good is practically 
brought out, by a variety of spiritual methods ; and 
that church or system of training is the best for a 
soul which fits its temperament and quickens its 
will. In some men the good is quickly and easily 
appealed to and developed. A simple faith and 
administration will reach and awaken it. Others 
have the sulphurets in the soul. They are obsti- 
nate. Common batteries and cool washings do 
not do the work. They need heat, fire, the treat- 
ment of the element of fear ; that takes hold of 
them. Calvinism is the process that reduces their 
stubborn self-will, and makes them agents of good. 
Give the proper temperaments to each church, — 
let the Episcopalians take those that can be best 
reached by their methods, and the Methodists 
take their natural material, and the Swedenbor- 
gians and the Quakers and the Calvinists theirs, 
and the Unitarians theirs, and great good will be 



356 Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 

done. The world of character will be richer. 
The work of the Spirit will be variously and prop- 
erly performed. " There are differences of admin- 
istrations, but the same Lord." Trouble often 
comes from misarrangement of characters under 
methods. Some people are ill at ease under Cal- 
vinistic ideas and treatment who would be hap- 
pier and stronger under Unitarian training. Some 
are brought up Episcopalians who are natural 
Quakers ; some are Baptists who were born for 
Swedenborg's philosophy and culture. Apportion 
souls right, and the Church would be stronger for 
its varieties of method and theology, — as this 
coast is richer by the rival processes in treating 
ores. 

But did 3 7 ou ever hear of a metallurgist denying 
that gold is gold, because it was obtained by an- 
other process than that which he uses and favors ? 
The contests of rival melters and assayers are 
over the question, Which is the wisest and cheap- 
est method for bringing out the precious metal for 
use in the w r orld ? They do not presume to say 
that no metal is good but that which their fur- 
naces have yielded. Theologians in their sphere 
have essentially done that. No practical Chris- 
tianity, they sometimes presume to say, nothing 
that God will accept and bless, will issue, or can 
issue, from your processes of administering truth, 
because you ignore the only means by which good 
is developed in men. 

In science men appeal to the facts. If you put 



Religions Lessons from Metallurgy. 357 

in a ton of ore and take out a pound of gold, 
you may say that there ought to be two pounds, 
but you can't say that the process does n't pro- 
duce any gold. And if a system of Christian 
administration produces honesty, integrity, prin- 
ciple, charity, interest in worship, interest in good 
ideas and good government and liberty and order, 
quiet and ejevated homes, readiness to serve 
others and to hold gifts and treasures partly in 
trust for others, — are these qualities to be denied 
to be good because the process which produces 
them is different from the ordinary customs ? The 
melter and assayer does not make coin ; society 
does not allow him to put his stamp on money 
and say all gold is spurious which is not poured 
from my crucibles. It is his office to produce 
gold. The government coins and issues it, and 
allows that great office to no private hands. So 
the business of churches is to produce purity, 
reverence, integrity, charity, readiness to do good 
in all forms. God rates and stamps the products, 
and his judgment is the final and the only one 
as to the honesty or spuriousness of the products 
of the sanctuaries. There is a Baptist culture 
and thought and theology ; there is a Methodist 
one, and an Episcopalian one, and a Catholic one, 
and a Presbyterian one. But there is no such 
thing as a Presbyterian truthfulness, a Baptist 
charity, an Episcopalian benevolence, a Unitarian 
integrity. These qualities are absolute. They 
have no sectarian stamp. They are the precious 



358 Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 

gold and silver of life wherever they appear ; and 
the attempt to localize or sectarianize them would 
be as futile as the attempt to refer each eagle or 
half-dollar of our daily currency to the lode whence 
it issued, or the laboratory where it was reduced. 

It is perfectly proper for a man to say, 'I believe 
that my church, with its theology and adminis- 
tration, is far better than any other to meet the 
needs of a large class of souls, and I love it and 
will cling to it, and strengthen it with all my power 
while I live." This is noble. But when he says, 
" No other administration or form of creed than 
mine entitles a church to the name ' Christian,' " 
he is a bigot. And when he goes so far as to 
deny that the great qualities of integrity, honor, 
beneficence, and self-sacrifice are substantial and 
acceptable to God if they have been associated 
with a theology and form of worship different from 
his own, he is not far, alas ! from being a blas- 
phemer of the Holy Ghost. 

There is one other point upon which I wish to 
make our subject bear in illustration. I mean the 
objects and the concentrated value of the Old 
Testament history and literature. Jesus said that 
the first great commandment was love of God ; 
the second was love of man ; and " on these two 
commandments hang all the law and the prophets." 
When one seizes these principles clearly in his 
thought, he holds mentally, then, the practical 
worth of the marvellous volume that begins with 
Genesis and closes with Malachi. When he strives 



Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 359 

to express these principles in his action, he is en- 
deavoring to live out all that the inspiration of the 
Old Testament, whatever be its extent or grade, 
has to offer as truth for the will of man. 

The tunnels, shafts, and galleries of the mine, 
the picks and shovellings and blastings, the ropes 
and pulleys and engines, the pumping and drain- 
ing, the hoisting and assorting, the labor and cost 
of transportation to the mill, the strength and ex- 
pense, and all the appurtenances of the mill itself, 
— the water or steam power, the wheels and belts 
and drums, the heavy stampers and batteries, the 
screens and sieves, the vats and mercury and 
chemicals, the washing and drying, the roasting and 
sweating, the melting and moulding into bars, — 
all are for the sake of the little shining bricks 
that are delivered from the reducing furnace at 
last. On those small squares of blended silver 
and gold hang all the worth and purpose of the 
mineral vein, and the toil and science and treasure 
expended on its development. 

There is a great discussion now about the Bible, 
especially the Old Testament, and its religious 
value. Is it a verbally inspired, completely accu- 
rate, and authoritative revelation ? The Old Tes- 
tament is a very wonderful book, and its value in 
the religious and providential training of the world 
cannot readily be stated. But it is not a con- 
tinuous revelation. It does not offer you concen- 
trated spiritual truth in all its pages, the pure 
silver and gold of the Spirit. The Old Testament 



360 Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 

is a great lode, or precious mineral vein, upheaved 
and winding through the strata of a national his- 
tory. There are different kinds and qualities of 
ore in it, — some easy, some difficult of reduction to 
the pure standard of moral truth. What splendid 
" pay streaks " there are in it, like Isaiah and por- 
tions of the Psalms, in which you can see the 
sparkle of the native silver and the free gold ! 
Follow Joshua and the Judges, and the average 
rock is not so rich. Some insist that it does not 
pay for working. There are, also, what miners 
call "horses" in it, — documents like Esther and 
Ecclesiastes and chapters of the Chronicles, — in 
which there is none of the precious metal of in- 
spiration. Streaks of trap-rock, too, like the book 
of Daniel, cross it, injected from a later age. 
And there are pages in it like Solomon's Song, 
showing the sparkle of iron pyrites which so many 
have mistaken for the glitter of genuine gold. 

The Old Testament, compared with all other 
ancient national literatures, is a religious gold and 
silver vein immensely, incalculably, divinely rich. 
That is its distinction in the world, and will be its 
distinction forever. And, by the statement and 
authority of Jesus himself, we get its concentrated 
value in the laws of love to God and our neighbor. 
It exists to educate the world to those principles 
and to supply means for extending those qualities. 
Theologies, councils, commentaries, churches, are 
finally valuable to the soul, not as they bind you 
and enslave you intellectually to the Old Testa- 



Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 361 

merit, but as they help you to grasp and retain 
those two religious statutes on which hang all the 
Law and the Prophets, and in which they are all 
summed up. Rightly studied, the Old Testament 
is, I believe, yet an immense help to the religious 
nature of man. But if any portions of its pages 
do not help and feed you, do not yield to you the 
precious gold of practical religious truth, you 
are at liberty to drop them. They are not your 
master ; they are offered only as your help. 

If you revere and love God, or try to, as the 
Infinite and Gracious Providence, if you love man 
and show it by service offered to human need, you 
carry in your heart what the Old Testament was 
organized to teach you. Inspiration, portable 
and practical, is found in the twin laws of religious 
and social love. If you understand little of com- 
mentaries and theological discussion and council 
lore, and have these, you have what Jesus Christ 
called the essentials. Knowledge of mining is 
good, but its practical value is in furnishing the 
silver for human use. This spirit of love is the 
silver into which the inspiration collected from the 
ore of the Bible is finally reduced. If you do 
not possess this spirit, your Biblical learning is 
only intellectual wisdom, your soundness of faith 
is only correct thinking ; and though you be bap- 
tized every day in the name and forms of the most 
orthodox creed, you advance not by a step towards 
the kingdom of heaven. It is not I that say this. 
It is the Apostle Paul. For he said : " Though I 



362 Religious Lessons from Metallurgy. 

have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
mysteries and all knowledge ; and though I have 
all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and 
have not charity, I am nothing." And again he 
said, " Love is the fulfilling of the law." 

1863. 



XXII. 



CHRISTIAN WORSHIP * 

'HIS is the first formal discourse that is to 



J. be uttered in our new house of praise. The 
occasion itself seems to ask us to consider the 
broad subject of worship. And no passage within 
the compass of the Bible opens that subject with 
words of such liberality and power as those which 
were spoken by Jesus of Nazareth to the woman 
of Samaria near Jacob's well. They are written 
in the twenty-third verse of the fourth chapter of 
St. John's Gospel : " The hour cometh and now 
is, when the true worshippers shall worship the 
Father in spirit and in truth." 

Of the breadth and inclusiveness of this pas- 
sage and its relation to theological controversies 
and Christian forms of devotion, we may be called 
to speak further on, but it is of worship itself 
as a natural, noble, and precious expression of 
human feeling that I wish first to treat. 

This church is erected to train and feed the 
spirit of worship. Not only by hymns and prayers, 

* Preached at the opening of the new church in San Francisco, 
January 10, 1864. 




364 Christian Worship. 



but by the influence of instruction and appeal as 
well, one of its main purposes — we may say, in- 
deed, decisively the main purpose of the services 
to be held in it on Sundays, year in and year 
out, till its material decays, is to stimulate and 
refresh the feelings of wonder and awe, of obliga- 
tion, gratitude, and trust before the Infinite. 

The spirit of adoration is as old as the records 
of humanity. Adam heard the voice of God in 
the garden. Abel offered sacrifice to an unseen 
power ; and the guilty Cain bowed with his gift, 
though it was not accepted. From the border 
line of light, where authentic history fails us, we 
feel our way back towards the birth of man by 
the ruins of temples and the fragments of solemn 
tradition. Of early races and nations that have 
perished, we know, in many instances, nothing 
more than this, — they worshipped. 

The disposition to worship belongs to the struc- 
ture of the human soul. Religious ideas are 
changed by the progress and diffusion of knowl- 
edge. Forms and theories of worship are shat- 
tered and left behind by the enlargement and the 
march of the intellect. Is it probable that wor- 
ship itself will be outgrown ? Sometimes we hear 
of fears that it may be so. Now and then a boast 
is made by an enemy of superstition that the ad- 
vance of science will yet eradicate the tendency 
to prayer and homage. The answer to the fear 
and the boast is this : " Is it likely that the 
progress of science will degrade human nature 



Christian Worship. 



36s 



and extinguish one of the deepest elements of 
human nobleness ? " With the gain of knowledge 
we instinctively associate the advance of our race. 
Think, for a moment, of this globe filled with in- 
habitants, and no spire or dome of praise on it, 
no pulse or throb of adoration in all its millions ! 
Think of this globe simply in its physical aspect, 
" a crust of fossils and a core of fire," spinning 
in the bleak immensity, and bearing myriads on 
myriads of intelligent creatures yearly around the 
sun, without wonder, without awe, without any 
cry from brain or heart into the surrounding mys- 
tery ! Suppose that the minds of these multi- 
tudes shall be cultured far beyond the average of 
even the most favored classes now, would you 
account it an advance of human nature, if all this 
knowledge was gained at the cost of the sense of 
a vast, incomprehensible power, within whose 
sweep the world and all its interests is bound ? 
Would you count it an advance, if it was pur- 
chased at such a price that there should never be 
again on the earth any tower to represent a place 
of adoration, any organ-music to bear up a chant 
or anthem, any hymn of pleading or penitence, 
any public or secret supplication for spiritual pro- 
tection and strength, any prayer of agony or affec- 
tion at the burial of the dead ? This is what it 
means, when the statement is made that science 
is to banish worship. Would it be a rise or a fall 
of humanity, — such progress ? and do you believe 
that the race is on the way, through knowledge, 
to such a destiny ? 



366 Christian Worship. 



Worship will cease when wonder dies in the 
heart of man, and when the sense of the infinite 
is expunged from his soul. Is the progress of 
knowledge likely to produce either of these re- 
sults ? How can all the light we can collect and 
concentrate from finite facts release us from the 
conception of the infinite, or help us to enclose 
it within the tiny measure of our thought ? And 
when has science so explained anything as to 
banish wonder from the mind that appreciates the 
explanation ? When the old belief that the earth 
was flat and still yielded to the proof that it is 
round and restless, was there anything in the 
change of conceptions to paralyze wonder or re- 
lease the mind from awe ? When the speed of 
light was measured, did religion suffer any shock 
through the sealing up of mystery ? When the 
structure of the beam of light was unfolded by 
analysis, and the hues of the colorless braid 
dishevelled, were the minds that gained the new 
knowledge injured in their religious instincts by 
the banishment of their ignorance ? And when 
human thought tries to measure and appreciate 
the distance of the nearest fixed star which as- 
tronomers have calculated, after patient and deli- 
cate experiments of years, is there anything in 
the process by which the blank evenness of space 
is thus broken, and a diamond-point moved back 
so far that the nimblest imagination is appalled 
in the attempt to realize it ; anything to embarrass 
the intellect in taking the attitude of worship ; 



Christian Worship. 367 



anything to stifle the cry of adoration from the 
soul to whom that knowledge comes ? 

Ah ! against what folly are we arguing thus ? 
Our knowledge in this universe to dry up the 
springs of awe, and deliver us from the weakness 
of adoration ! Let the man come forward who is 
ready to say, under the starry arch of night, " I 
know so much of nature that I blow as a bubble 
from me the thought of God, and count it childish 
to entertain the thought of a Sovereign Mind ! " 
Did Newton feel like saying that ? Would Her- 
schel say that in his observatory ? If they had 
said it, should we think of them as greater men 
than now ? If David could have known the skies 
as we know them, would he have had less reason 
to say, would he have been less moved to exclaim, 
"When I survey thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast 
ordained, Lord, what is man that thou art mindful 
of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him "? 

It will not be the progress of knowledge, but 
the decay of the noble elements in human nature, 
that will ever banish worship from the world. 

Indeed, the glory of knowledge is in fellowship 
with the devout sentiment. There are three pur- 
poses for which we may study truth, — to obtain 
power over nature, to cultivate and enlarge our 
minds, and to discern and acknowledge a revela- 
tion from a boundless and invisible thought. A 
man may study the law of gravitation in all its 
proofs and applications in order to widen his con- 



368 Christian Worship. 



trol over matter through accurate comprehension 
of the conditions of mechanical force. He may- 
study it with equal ardor, without any reference to 
practical uses, but for the sake of enlarging the 
domain of truth over which his intellect can 
sweep, for the mere thirst after the light and 
joy of knowledge. And he may also study it, in 
its relation to this globe and all worlds, as a dis- 
closure of the thought of an unfathomable Intel- 
lect that unfolds itself in the order of the universe. 
In which of these ways is the glory of knowledge 
attained ? I say nothing in disparagement of the 
first two, of course. They are essential to civili- 
zation. The last is not inconsistent with devotion 
to the others. But if men stop with the first two, 
do they not miss the highest relations of truth ? 
They study facts without their fountain. They 
read words with no reference to the genius that 
published them. They live in a world of cold 
effects that never hint the majesty of their cause. 

It is to refresh men with this noblest relation 
of truth and knowledge that churches are built. 
With the unfolding of truth as universities teach 
it, and for such purposes, a church has little to do. 
But it has a right to use all the truth that science 
gathers and establishes in illustration of the mind 
and providence of God. Worship is the exercise 
which the Church is to sustain. And all the as- 
pects of truth which will bend the mind of man 
in humility and exalt it in adoration are legiti- 
mately within the range of the pulpit, and are, 
indeed, a portion of its trust. 



Christian Worship. 369 



We dedicate this house to the worship of God 
" in truth." We have no fear of desecrating the 
sacred hours if we listen here to interpretations 
of the majesty and providence of the Almighty 
through lessons from nature. Sometimes we hear 
criticisms of the Unitarian pulpit, and even sneers 
at it, because it often introduces topics from na- 
ture that seem, it is said, more suitable for lectures 
than for sermons. Our answer is that we find 
God in nature, and we build our pulpits to inter- 
pret God. We find God in Mount Shasta as in 
Hermon, and do not fear to say so on Sunday. 
W r e see the majesty of God in the Sierra as in the 
range of Lebanon, and are not restrained now 
and then from the confession. We find the eter- 
nal goodness and beauty mirrored in Lake Tahoe 
as Christ found them in the colors of Gennesa- 
reth, and we have not learned from him to be 
timid in our acknowledgment of what God unfolds. 
And so long as the book of Job remains in the 
Bible with its appeal for faith, in the most eloquent 
chapters of the world's literature, drawn from the 
aspects of creation; and so long as the One-hun- 
dred-and-fourth Psalm pours its praise through 
verses that mark the outline of human knowledge 
twenty-five centuries ago ; and so long as the sub- 
limest passages of prophets are those which use 
the mountains, stars, and sea as the conductors 
of the glory of the Omnipotent \ and so long as 
Paul invites us to understand how the invisible 
things of God are made known by the things that 
16* 



37o 



Christian Worship. 



are made ; and so long as Jesus Christ publishes 
his insight through parables, and calls us, that we 
may know the constancy and tenderness of Provi- 
dence, to "consider the lilies of the field how they 
grow," — we have no hesitation, on grounds of 
reverence for Scripture, in making appeal within 
the Church for adoration of the Infinite, to the 
wonders of his thought and power that are open- 
ing to men from the depths of the earth, from the 
study of the hills, from the structure of the ani- 
mate creation, from the splendors and marvels of 
light, from the liberality of sea and air, from the 
subtile surprises of the microscope, and from the 
tremendous spectacle and forces which the tele- 
scope has unveiled. 

We believe that the misuse of the Church is not 
that such themes are occasionally brought into it, 
but rather when they are steadily kept out. Truth 
is wasted when it is not turned to account to 
make men more reverent before the Infinite. And 
scepticism, or indifference to sacred truth, is now 
increasing in Christendom, for one prominent rea- 
son, because pulpits are not more faithful in inter- 
preting the new aspects and disclosures of science 
as part of the unveiling of the Almighty to man. 

We dedicate this house to the worship of one 
God, the source and support of all life and the 
ruler of all souls. We build it not only to adore 
him in the wonder with which his works are con- 
templated, but also in the homage we pay to his 
sovereign righteousness. In this line of worship 



Christian Worship. 



371 



we come into deeper fellowship with the spirit 
that breathes from the chief pages of the Bible. 

I have said that the glory of knowledge lies in 
the acceptance of truth as a manifestation of an 
Infinite mind. It is, however, a profounder and 
more thrilling statement that is made, when we 
are told that all truth and beauty issue from a 
holy and sovereign Will. This is the foundation 
for a more vital worship from man, — the pour- 
ing of incense upward from our conscience and 
our moral powers. Show me two men, one of 
whom has enriched his mind with all the laws of 
every modern science, but who does not vitally 
believe in the sacred personality of God as the 
patron of all goodness, and the other of whom, 
with but slight acquisition of secular knowledge, 
is penetrated with a conviction that the world is 
ruled by a righteous and all-potent Will, and I 
will show you in the second man a nobler man, 
and a man who has attained deeper truth than 
the first. 

The world was startled not many years ago by 
the announcement that a European astronomer 
suspected that he had discovered a central sun. 
Around one of the Pleiades he believed that there 
was evidence for thinking the whole mass of stars 
sprinkled upon our night was slowly revolving. 
What a conception that one of those little points 
of light is the axis of such a stellar whole ! The 
doctrine of one God is a mightier thought than 
that. The doctrine that his will is opposed to 



372 



Christian Worship. 



evil, that his eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, 
that his worship, to be accessible, must be offered 
in simplicity of heart, and with a desire to be re- 
deemed from evil and to aid the cause of good, 
and that thus all spirits of all worlds, the spirits of 
the just made perfect, and the emotions of angels 
are honoring Him, is a conception that dims the 
physical magnificence of the outward heavens. 

Every church is reared to represent this 
thought. The Bible has inwrought this doctrine 
with the mind of the race. This was the deepest 
inspiration of David, of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of 
Habakkuk. This is the substructure of the edi- 
fice of religious truth in the New Testament. 
And this is a conception that cannot be out- 
grown. It is ultimate. We can grow in the 
acknowledgment of it, in the power and blessed- 
ness which acquaintance with it brings ; but the 
wisest man that will ever live can never go be- 
yond it. In harmony with all Christians we are to 
worship here the immaculate righteousness of the 
Creator. We shall bring our sinfulness here, not 
to hide it, but to pray that it may be forgiven and 
cleansed. We shall bring here the record of our 
sluggishness in service, that in his light we may 
be affected with shame and spurred to nobler 
endeavor. We shall bring here the cause of the 
poor and the oppressed, every interest of needy 
humanity and struggling truth, assured that his 
ear is ready for every petition that commends to 
him the hope and suffering of his children. We 



Christian Worship. 



373 



shall bring here the record of our victories over 
evil — few as they will be — with the confidence 
that they will be accepted as the most sincere 
homage of his equity and truth. Civilization 
depends on the continuance of faith in the per- 
sonality and holiness of God. It is only through 
that faith that the consciences of men will be 
illumined, that the will of man will be curbed, 
that the devotion and sacrifice of heroes in the 
cause of truth will be inspired and confirmed. 
To all the wholesome awe which that faith sheds, 
to its menace of guilt, and its welcome of all 
goodness as divine, we devote our church. 

But there is still a higher conception connected 
#ith the personality and purity of God, — the 
word " Father." The Bible in all its prophetic 
chapters glows with the solemn light of the divine 
holiness. But Jesus first uttered with confidence 
and tenderness, as the bond of union for the 
whole race in worship, the word " Father." In a 
very few passages of the Old Testament that word 
is associated with the Infinite. Bat Jesus never 
used any word suggesting power chiefly, or holi- 
ness exclusively, in relation to the Creator. He 
never speaks of God as the Creator, or the Al- 
mighty, or the Sovereign, or the Infinite, or the 
Eternal. Neither of those words was ever used 
by Jesus, so far as the records tell us of his 
thought. Whenever he described God, it was the 
word " Father," and only that, which he used. 
And when this word — the fountain of love — was 



374 



Christian Worship. 



added to the conception which the Old Testa- 
ment had traced in fire of the personality and 
Righteousness of the Infinite, the structure of the 
Bible as the educator of the world's religious sen- 
timent was complete. God is one, God is holy, 
God is the Father, — the Infinite is love; then 
the attraction is complete in the heavens for all 
the faculties of man, and for all human faculties 
in every race, in every age, and in all stages of 
progress and attainment. 

We owe this final revelation to Jesus Christ. 
The sense of mystery, the sense of beauty, the 
will, the conscience, the affections, — all are drawn 
upward to that name with which, through him, the 
Infinite has clothed himself. We build our house 
in honor of this supreme thought of the supreme 
soul of all centuries. To the worship of God the 
Father we rear and devote it. 

It is not every heart that reaches that faith, 
even among sincere Christians. It is not on every 
day, or every Sunday, that those to whom it does 
come are able to hold and enjoy it. But when 
we do gain the vision of it, we reach a conception 
vaster and more precious than all the books of 
science can unveil ; and when we do for a season 
feel the joy and experience the peace of it, it is a 
joy which the world cannot give or take away, it 
is a "peace that passeth understanding." The 
soul in which faith in the paternity of the Infinite 
has its home, and which relies on it in all the 
shocks and surprises of experience, the soul 



Christian Worship. 



375 



which interprets this world by its light, and colors 
the next with its hope, however slight may be 
its attainment in knowledge, has reached the 
height of inward power and rest. 

Adoration of the Father is the distinctively 
Christian worship. " The true worshippers shall 
worship the Father in spirit and in truth." How 
broad this sentence is intellectually, as well as 
how deep spiritually ! How it interprets the 
comprehensiveness as well as tenderness of the 
Christian faith ! How it swells as the fitting 
dome over the foundations and walls of the Old 
Testament ! How it sweeps high over the pride 
of races, the antagonisms of Christian theology, 
the bitterness of sectarian passion, the chronic 
antipathies of differing forms ! Eighteen hundred 
years ago these words were spoken in Syrian air 
by the founder of Christianity. For nearly eigh- 
teen hundred years they have been read, in 
various tongues, in the written or printed records 
of the New Testament. Yet in their elevation 
and their inclusiveness they sound fresh and 
strange to-day. 

If the question were put to the representative 
theologians of the great churches which seek to 
honor Christ, " What is the distinction of accept- 
able Christian worship ? " how many prominent 
Catholics would dare to say, in reply, that tem- 
ples and priestly ministrations are not essen- 
tial to it ? how many leading Trinitarians would 
promptly answer that the conception of the Trinity 



376 Christian Worship. 



is not vital ? how many thoughtful Episcopalians, 
of all branches in that communion, would spon- 
taneously acknowledge that the order and sacra- 
ments of the church cannot be intruded into it ? 
how many Evangelical scholars would cordially 
confess that mental conceptions of depravity and 
atonement are subordinate, and must not be min- 
gled with it ? Yet Jesus does put all these out of 
sight. He does not say the true worshippers 
shall offer adoration to the Trinity, nor through 
the forms of the mass or any liturgy, nor with 
this or that conception of human sinfulness, nor 
in connection with any metaphysical theory of 
the cross ; but " the true worshippers shall wor- 
ship the Father in spirit and in truth." 

" The day," says Ernest Renan, " when Jesus 
pronounced this word he was truly Son of God. 
He spoke, for the first time, the sure word on 
which the edifice of eternal religion shall rest. 
He founded the pure worship, of no land, of no 
date, which all lofty souls will practise to the end 
of time. His religion that day was not only the 
religion good for humanity, it was absolute re- 
ligion ; and if other planets have inhabitants en- 
dowed with reason and morality, their religion 
can be no other than that which Jesus proclaimed 
at Jacob's well. The word of Jesus has been a 
gleam in a dark night. But the gleam will be- 
come the full day ; and after having run through 
the whole circle of errors, mankind will return to 
that word as the imperishable expression of its 
faith and its hopes." 



Christian Worship. 



377 



Bow, brethren, before the breadth and insight 
of these words of the Great Teacher. Bow with 
your inmost spirit that you have reared a house 
in his name and to the praise of the Eternal Love 
to which he offered his soul. If there are any 
who deny that our worship is Christian, because 
our creed is discordant at many points with the 
popular conceptions of theology, rejoice that you 
can take shelter under the declaration of the 
Founder of our religion. Rejoice that you may 
know that, if the Father, to whom we rear this 
church, is honored here by love and trust, the 
offerings will be accepted and the worship will be 
blest. Rejoice also, and more deeply, that you 
are delivered from narrowness of theory in the 
Master's kingdom. Rejoice that you can gladly 
affirm that, in all churches, whether or not the 
doctrines be accurately true, and the ritual the 
best that can be devised, every breathing of adora- 
tion towards the Infinite Providence, every sincere 
prostration of the will before the Sovereign Holi- 
ness, every emotion of trust in the gracious care 
of the Eternal, every cry for help under the hard- 
ships and amid the pressures of life, is answered 
by the Spirit, who visits the heart and seeketh 
such as " worship in spirit and in truth." 

Is it not cause for devout gladness, Christian 
brethren, that such an edifice is reared for such 
ideas in this youthful and thriving city ? I do 
not say that we have built it for God, as though 
he requires it for his honor. He to whom the 



378 Christian Worship. 



universe belongs looks not for temples, made 
with hands, as themselves needed offerings in his 
praise. He who sees a myriad mornings painting 
countless worlds every instant, and the splendor 
of perpetual sunsets streaming over innumerable 
globes, requires not the structures heaved up by 
our puny toil. All the praise that God the Spirit 
asks is devout emotion, clean affections, trust in 
his love. 

But that we may nurture devout emotion, that 
we may find the calm in which to seek him, and 
the aids for upward-looking thought, we need 
sacred places, rooms that are shielded from the 
intrusion of worldly suggestions, an air that is 
thrilled with devout music and spiritual appeal 
alone. We need the help of consecrated seasons 
and holy spots in order that we may the more 
readily worship the Father in spirit and in truth. 
If you cannot so easily find access to God here 
as elsewhere, if in your home your thoughts take 
wing to the Infinite benignity more readily than 
here, if in the presence of nature or under the 
inspiration of a wise and thrilling book — some 
revelation of truth by science, some sermon by a 
soul that was an organ of the Holy Ghost, some 
chapter from a devout man's life — your heart is 
moved into communion with the Infinite as it can- 
not be in the church, then this building and its 
services are not within your need. But if it is not 
so, — as with most of us I am sure it is not, — if in 
the toils and whirl of these busy days it is a bless- 



Cliristiaii Worship. 



379 



ing to find a place where the chants of prophets 
are fitly winged with music, and the words of 
Christ are uttered, and the air is kept free for the 
pleading of Christian hymns and the interpreta- 
tion of Christian sanctities, — and if that place has 
a beauty that is not out of harmony with the uses 
it was reared to serve, — will you not rejoice that 
such an aid is offered to you to prepare your feel- 
ing to meet and receive the blessing of the Spirit? 
There are no sacred places until souls make them 
so. But how much easier can souls make those 
places sacred that are not invaded by the rough 
conflicts and the coarse passions of the world ! 
As our hymn has told us, 

" All space is holy, for all space 

Is filled by thee ; but human thought 
Burns clearer in some chosen place 
Where thy own words of love are taught." 

Have we too many of such " chosen places " in 
our modern cities? — too many here, where not 
one eighth of the population regularly attend 
church ? Have we too many in proportion to the 
interest we show in the secular development of 
our nature and our civilization ? Above all, have 
we too many that are erected in testimony of our 
faith in the Infinite Fatherhood? No. You know 
how emphatically we must say no to each of these 
questions. I call on you to reioice in this day's 
work and offering. It is a tribute which the 
noblest faculties of our nature erect to the ideas 
and sanctities with which they are lifted into sym- 
pathy. It is a tribute of devotion to a form of 



38o 



Christian Worship. 



faith which we hold precious. It is a tribute of 
allegiance to the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Shall we make our offering incomplete by leav- 
ing it unpaid for? Shall we say that we honor 
the highest powers of our nature so slightly that 
we are willing the very reverence we pay to them 
shall be liable to earthly mortgage ? I trust not. 
I cannot believe that we are ready to consent that 
the shadow of debt shall be cast upon the beauty 
of our sanctuary, and dim the integrity of our con- 
secration of it. Until a church is paid for — if 
the worshippers in it are able to pay for it — the 
building- is nobler than the spirit of those who use 
it ; it is not a sign of a living faith in great truths 
and sanctities in the hearts of those who sing their 
hymns and offer their supplication beneath its roof. 

I trust and will believe that our new religious 
home is paid for already in the generous, if yet 
uncompleted, purpose of our congregation. I 
trust and believe that we feel the joy of devoting 
it to the highest uses and the most sacred truth 
which the heart of man can serve and the thought 
of man can entertain. And far above the ele- 
ments of nobleness and beauty which the genius 
and skill of man have wrought into its workman- 
ship I trust and pray that the consecrating noble- 
ness and beauty of it may ever be that, in a world 
of change, and in a city singularly blessed in out- 
ward good by the providence of God, it stands 
devoted to the unchanging love of the Father of 
all spiritsawho accepts and blesses the worship of 
the humble! hearjj. ^ ^ Q ^ 



